The cardinal democrat: Henry Edward Manning

Rx Libris

CONVENT OF
THE ASSUMPTION

20 Kensington Square, London, W.8

The Cardinal Democrat

Henry Edward Manning

The Cardinal
Democrat:

Henry Edward Manning

By I. A. TAYLOR

AUTHOR OF

'QUEEN HENRIETTA MARIA,' 'QUEEN HOKTENSE AND HER FRIENDS,' ETC.

Homo sum et human! nihil a me alienum '

1908

KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & CO. LTD,

DRYDEN HOUSE, GERRARD STREET, W.

LONDON

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I

PAGE

Introductory • I

CHAPTER II

Appointed Archbishop of Westminster — Social Sympathies
— Beginning Work — Memorial to Cardinal Wiseman —
Educational Projects - - 17

CHAPTER III

The Archbishop's Methods — Loneliness — ' A Fireman on
Duty' — Aspirations for his Flock — His Ideal of a Bishop
— Characteristics - 39

CHAPTER IV

Breach with Mr. Gladstone — the Vatican Decrees — Death
of the Archbishop of Paris — the Agricultural Labourer's
Union — Lecture on the Dignity and Rights of Labour
— Varied Work • 55

CHAPTER V

Elevation to the Cardinalate — Manning's Position in Eng
land — Poverty of the Church — his Financial Position - 77

CHAPTER VI

Temperance Work — the United Kingdom Alliance —
Development of Cardinal Manning's Views — Total
Abstinence - - 87

CHAPTER VII

Consistency — Manning and the Temporal Power — Early
Views — Change of Opinion — Regret at the Policy of
the Vatican - - - - • - no

vi CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER VIII

The Cardinal's Attitude towards the Irish Question — Letter
to Lord Grey— Gradual Change in his Opinions —
He becomes an Advocate of Home Rule — His Rela
tions with Irish Members — Monsignor Persico's Mission 1 19

CHAPTER IX

Increasing Age— Multiplicity of Interests— The Cardinal's

Visitors — Henry George - 141

CHAPTER X

The Social Purity Crusade — Trafalgar Square Riot — The

Cardinal's Opinion of the Government - -154

CHAPTER XI

Later Writings — Their Character — Views on the Work of
the Salvation Army — Plea for the Worthless— Irre
sponsible Wealth 163

CHAPTER XII

The Knights of Labour — Cardinal Manning's Interposition
—Labour Questions in England — ' The Law of Nature '
— Manning's Influence at the Vatican — Interest in
French Affairs— Leo xin.'s Encyclical on Labour - 178

CHAPTER XIII

The Dockers' Strike - . . 195

CHAPTER XIV

Split in the Irish Party— Manning's Attitude — His Fore
casts—Interview with M. Boyer d'Agen - 223

CHAPTER XV

The End Approaching— Farewells— The Cardinal's Jubilee

— Congratulations— Last Months — Death — His Funeral 230

INDEX

251

THE PRINCIPAL AUTHORITIES CONSULTED

'Miscellanies.' H. E. Manning. 3 Vols.

' The Letters of Thirty-five Years.' Edited by J. Oldcastle

' La Question Ouvriere et Sociale.' Preface de Boyer d'Agen

' The Temperance Speeches of Cardinal Manning.' Edited, with
a Preface, by C. Kegan Paul

' Cardinal Manning.' J. R. Gasquet

'Cardinal Manning.' A. W. Hutton

' Le Cardinal Manning et son Action Sociale.' J. Lemire

1 Le Cardinal Manning.' F. de Pressense

1 Memorials of Cardinal Manning.' J. Oldcastle

'Life of Henry Edward Manning, Cardinal Archbishop of West
minster.' E. S. Purcell

Contemporary Newspapers and Magazines

THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY

IT is forty-two years since Henry Edward Manning
was consecrated Archbishop of Westminster and
took up his great and special work in London — a
work which has been called the consolidation of
Catholicism on a democratic basis. Twenty-seven
years later that work, so far as he was concerned,
was done ; the tireless brain had ceased to labour,
the busy hands were at rest. But not before a
great achievement had been accomplished. He
had gained the hearts of his countrymen ; he had
overcome their prejudices ; he had been accepted
as the recognized ally of the section of the nation
whose trust and affection he valued most. He
was ' the good Cardinal ' of the working man.

There are maxims, constantly repeated as
truisms, so false that it seems strange that they

should ever have become embedded in the human

A

2 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

mind ; yet centuries may be necessary before they
can be eradicated. There are verities writ so large
that it would almost appear that men could not
choose but read them ; yet hundreds of years may
pass before their claim to practical acceptance is
vindicated.

Such a truth is the identity of Christian and
democratic principles — a truth perfunctorily and
theoretically acknowledged, but disallowed in any
true sense by the majority of the friends and foes
of religion alike. It is a truth obscured and veiled
by the action of those who have again and again
made of the Christian Church an instrument and
tool of oppression, have striven to turn it to their
own profit ; who have employed it in the interests of
a class or a party, and have succeeded in partially
masking its character and nature.

* By a singular concurrence of events,' says
Tocqueville, ' religion is entangled in those insti
tutions which democracy assails, and it is not
unfrequently brought to reject the equality it
loves, and to curse that liberty as a foe which it
might hallow by its alliance.'

But, in spite of all, facts remain unchanged.
Nor can it be denied that a body admitting
unconditionally and in their most absolute form,
the principles of equality and brotherhood ; know-

INTRODUCTORY 3

ing no distinctions of caste or class ; bound by no
restrictions of nationality or race ; whose hierarchy
owes nothing to birth or blood, and whose supreme
ruler may be the son of a peasant or of a beggar,
is, in theory, constitution, and essence, a demo
cratic organisation. There was one scheme, said
Mr. Ben Tillett, speaking of current methods
of dealing with latter day social problems, which
had been invented for 1900 years but never
tried. It was that contained in the Sermon on
the Mount.

The same principles find diverse expression
according to the needs and necessities of age,
atmosphere, and environment ; according, too, to
the development of the civilisation upon which
they are to work. At a time when the ultimate
triumph of the democracy may be said to be
assured, it becomes increasingly important to show
that Christianity is its friend, not its foe ; and that
even though called upon, like Balaam, to curse, it
has nothing but a blessing to give.

Some men have set their hands to this work ;
have striven, and are striving still, to bring home to
the comprehension of the struggling masses the
fact, that the Church is not the Church of the few,
but of the multitude ; that its interests are not, as
it sometimes has been made to appear, the interests

4 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

of a class, but of humanity ; to render the words
of St. Paul a reality, and to prove that, in its eyes,
all are equal, that there is neither Jew nor Gentile,
bond or free.

There have been moments when it seemed that
success was within the grasp of these workers —
times such as that, all too short, when Pius IX. —
reviled by reactionists as the head of revolution in
Europe — stood out temporarily as the recognized
leader of those who sought, here below, a better
country ; or when Leo xill. took up the cause of
the labourers of the world ; or when, in England,
Henry Edward Manning, the head of the Roman
Catholic Church in this country, came forward,
reckless of the hostility evoked by his action, as
the representative of democratic aspirations, and
joined, without distinction of class or creed, with
all engaged in fighting the battles of the weapon
less crowd and in pleading the cause of the mute
or the hopeless.

'We did not look upon him as the Cardinal/
said a London workman — ' we looked upon him as
our friend.' It is as the friend of the working man,
the defender of the weak, the pleader — to use his
own words — for the worthless, that he will be
represented here. This aspect of his life and work
must necessarily occupy, if an important, yet a

INTRODUCTORY 5

subordinate part in the biographies dealing with
the career, as a whole, of the Cardinal Archbishop
of Westminster ; 1 and notwithstanding the lives
already in existence, it may be that there is room
for a study exclusively concerned with his labours,
not as a Prince of the Church, or in connection
with ecclesiastical and doctrinal affairs, but as the
friend and advocate of the poor and the helpless,
the Cardinal democrat.

The position he occupied was novel and in a
measure unique. In a paper printed in the
Nouvelle Revue at his death, his attitude and aims
were described by a foreign critic. To break with
dynasties and concordats ; to get outside historical
traditions ; to go to the people ; to apply the words
of the Christ, ' I have pity upon the multitude ; ' to
direct and favour democracy — such is the account
there given of his ideal. * If the holy See and the
Church,' added the sanguine writer, ' are upon the
point of opening the social and democratic era, it
is to Cardinal Manning that the honour of having
hastened this change is due. As man, Bishop,

1 In Mr. Purcell's Life, for example, the chapter devoted to
nearly twenty years of the Cardinal's work as philanthropist and
political and social reformer, occupies no more than eighty-five
pages ; whereas the account of the proceedings and intrigues, of
wholly ephemeral interest, concerning the appointment of a suc
cessor to Cardinal Wiseman, extend to some two hundred.

6 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Cardinal, and social reformer, this is his dis
tinguishing characteristic in history.'

The passage correctly defines the position held
by the Cardinal, not only in England, but in Europe
and America. ' Were I not Cardinal Archbishop
of Westminster,' he once said, ' I could find it in me
to be a demagogue.' He was not a demagogue.
He has been ticketed with various names, has been
claimed by different factions ; but he belonged to
no one political organisation, committed himself
to no political sect. Again and again he emphati
cally denied that he was attached to either of the
great rival parties in the state. ' I have no party
politics,' he wrote as early as 1866, 'but would
oppose both parties, or support either when they
act justly to the holy See and to our poor.'

These words give the key to his attitude through
out ; inconsistent or varying in much else, con
sistent in this. God and the poor — to him service
of the one implied care and solicitude for the
other, and in his eyes the two great gospel pre
cepts were indissolubly blended and united. His
politics, he explained twenty-four years later, when,
his career nearly over and his accounts made up,
he was taking a general review of his position,
past and present, were social politics; and he
prayed God that whosoever should succeed him

INTRODUCTORY 7

in his office might renounce politics and parties,
supporting or opposing them in absolute inde
pendence.

The independence he desired for his successor
he was resolute in asserting on his own behalf, and
it was acknowledged on all hands. ' As to Cardinal
Manning,' Lord Salisbury once said, describing
the opinions of the members of some Royal Com
mission, 'no one can say what party he is of/
When asked what position he would have preferred
to fill had he not occupied his own, he is quoted
as replying that he would have chosen to be candi
date for Marylebone in the radical interest. But
the radical party would have found him a trouble
some and insubordinate accession. Nor would he
have been a more submissive member of any other
political faction. Whig and Tory — he always used
the old nomenclature — alike represented in his eyes
different forms of class selfishness, the one aristo
cratic, the other well to do, and from both he held
resolutely aloof.

Yet he drew a distinction. With the Tories he
was naturally in less sympathy than with their
opponents. Toryism was the traditional strong
hold of privilege. It was the upholder of mono
polies and of tyrannies, the obstructor of legis
lation designed to ameliorate the condition of

8 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

the poor, and, as such, he was its vowed and
open antagonist, ready, save on exceptional occa
sions, to throw the weight of his influence into the
scale against it. Nevertheless he had no liking
for a destructive policy, and his respect for law,
when it coincided with justice, his reverence for
the English constitution, was great. Free from
pledges or from engagements, he was from first to
last avowedly on the side of any party and every
party capable of being used as a means to better
the condition of the labouring millions, the foe of
every party adverse to such measures. Political
institutions, political aims and objects, were of
infinitely less consequence in his eyes than the
great social problems.

' Such is my radicalism/ he said, * going down
to the roots of the sufferings of the people.' It
was the sufferings of the people, the people's
wrongs, and the people's needs, which made him
what he was, and what he prayed that whosoever
should succeed to his office might likewise be.

Judging each question as it arose upon its
merits and independently, it follows that he fre
quently laid himself open to that charge of incon
sistency to which those men are liable who accept
one article of a party creed and reject others,
approve one item in a political or social pro-

INTRODUCTORY 9

gramme and withhold their approbation from
another. He did not, in the current and significant
phrase, adopt a complete set of opinions ready
made ; he selected his own, and where a formula
commonly found in conjunction with others con
flicted with his sense of justice or right, he refused
it a place on the list.

Nor is it possible to deny that, as time went by,
his views on certain subjects underwent a change.
He would not have been concerned to apologise
for the fact To be incapable of changing an
opinion is to have lost the power of learning from
life and experience. To be ashamed of avowing
a change of opinion is to play the part of a moral
coward. Manning, open-eyed and open-minded
to the last, was always ready to acknowledge that
he had miscalculated forces at work, and to re
arrange his plans and his hopes on a fresh and
more solid basis.

His attitude towards public affairs having been
described, it remains, before entering upon a
detailed study of his work, to examine into the
causes and influences which had made him what
he was.

The line of conduct he pursued was of course
primarily the result of the nature and character of
the man, large-hearted, wide-minded, pre-eminently

io THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

pitiful of suffering and wrong, and with the power
of co-operation arising from imaginative sympathy
and the faculty of understanding and respecting
convictions he did not share. But other factors
had contributed to shape his course.

His father was a Tory, and birth and training
would have naturally prepared the son to follow in
his steps. Instinctively, however, he rejected the
political creed of his family. By him, as boy and
afterwards as man, equality before God was not
only an axiom theoretically and perfunctorily
admitted, but was consciously and imperatively
felt. This sense of equality was strengthened
and accentuated by the public school life of
Harrow — in his opinion a great leveller ; and as
time went on the instinctive intuitions of the boy
became the deliberate judgments of the man.
Harrow was no more than one element in the
training supplied by his early years. Oxford
followed, continuing or inaugurating intercourse
with men destined to set their mark upon their
generation ; whilst before he had finally decided
upon a clerical career he had passed some months
as a clerk in the Colonial Office, and had had the
opportunity of becoming acquainted with London
life.

In comparing the work he accomplished with

INTRODUCTORY 11

that achieved by others, it should consequently be
remembered that he was unhandicapped, as
philanthropist and reformer, by the disadvantages
necessarily attaching, by education and tradition,
to many of his co-religionists, lay and ecclesiastical.
Upon the counterbalancing advantages enjoyed by
those upon whom no breach with their past has
been incumbent, and who can look back upon a
career at one with itself, it is not necessary to
dwell ; but it is fair to bear in mind that Manning
was exempt from the disabilities and difficulties of
men bred in the inevitably narrowing atmosphere
of a minority, and embittered and alienated from
the national life by the recollection of centuries of
ostracism and injustice. To the great position he
was to hold in the Catholic Church, he united the
formative influences of a boyhood and early man
hood spent in touch and in sympathy with the
mass of the nation to which he belonged.

Religion joined hands with life to impress upon
him the same principles. Whilst, at the Political
Economy Club, he was listening to the discus
sions of such men as Whately, Grote, Tooke,
and others, he was comparing their conclusions
with those to be drawn from the Scriptures.
Moses, he would afterwards say in jest, had
made him a Radical ; the Hebrew theocracy

12 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

was a true republic ; monarchy a revolt and a
chastisement Later on, he drew support from the
saying of St. Thomas Aquinas that God gave
sovereignty immediately to the people, mediately
to Prince, President, or Consul. Throughout the
future Cardinal's life, his principles as democratic
and social reformer were closely linked and
associated with his convictions as Christian and
Catholic.

What sacred history taught, secular history con
firmed. The historical and constitutional history
of England, as he interpreted its records, con
spired to place him, as ecclesiastic no less than
as man, on the side of the people. In noting
the growth of democratic convictions in Europe,
Tocqueville ascribed the equality of conditions
towards which society is tending chiefly to the
action of the Catholic Church : * The clergy
opened its ranks to all classes — to the poor and
to the rich, the villein and the lord ; equality
penetrated into the Government through the
Church, and the being who, as a serf, must have
vegetated in perpetual bondage, took his place as
a priest in the midst of nobles, and not unfrequently
above the head of kings.' The first duty of men
in power was now to educate the democracy ; if
possible, to warm its faith ; to purify its morals ;

INTRODUCTORY 13

to direct its energies ; to instruct its inexperience ;
and to adapt its government to fresh conditions.
' A new science of politics is indispensable to a
new world.'

It is not without significance for those who
would trace the genesis of the Cardinal's social
faith, that these passages are found quoted by him
as possibly in part responsible for the opinions of
Frederic Ozanam ; and the ideals placed before
Tocqueville's readers may not have been without
a share in determining his own. He may, in
truth, as an observer of his career has conjectured,
have felt that he was standing at the opening of a
new era — an era to him, as to Frederick Robert
son, full of hope — and that to himself might be
entrusted the work of leading the way in the
reconciliation of the Church and the democracy.
A teacher of a different school in theology, but
holding convictions kindred to the Cardinal's on
social matters, has hazarded the assertion that the
development of democratic principles in the
secular sphere involves a corresponding modifica
tion of the religious ideal as understood in post-
reformation times. ' Science, philosophy, and
history,' says Canon Scott Holland, ' have all con
spired together to dismiss with ridicule the petty
individualism which used to ascribe to the organisa-

14 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

tion of the secular state a purely external and
regulative function.' Man and the State, no
longer represented as opposed each to each, ' are
seen to be the two correlative factors of a single
process, which we call civilisation.5 As indi
vidualism in secular matters has given place to a
wider and nobler conception of society, so in the
spiritual realm individualistic forms of belief have
become impossible. In the Church alone is an
ideal realised corresponding to that towards which
men's eyes are turning in the secular domain —
namely, the rights of citizenship in a great cor
porate body co-extensive with civilised humanity
itself.1

With, then, these objects and aims before him,
bent also upon opening the ranks of those labour
ing for the common welfare to Catholics, and
demonstrating the fact that, differences of creed
apart, the duties imposed on all members of
the one commonwealth are the same, all belong
ing equally to the one great national unity,
Manning entered the community of English
Catholics, a body described by a Scotchman as
' small, but varra respectable.' Into it he brought
fresh life, new standards of conduct and principles
of activity ; gradually breaking down the barriers

1 ' God's City.' Canon H. Scott Holland.

INTRODUCTORY 15

set up by ignorance and distrust on the one side ;
by narrowness, jealousy, the habit of aloofness,
and the remembrance of wrongs suffered and
resented, on the other. This was, in the social
domain, the great work he inaugurated and
carried to so astonishing a degree of success. Of
a different creed to the enormous majority of
English working men, the chief representative of
a Church they had regarded with dislike and
suspicion, he proved to them that no man could
have their interests more at heart than he, that none
was more intimately and personally concerned
in their welfare ; and was accepted by them,
generously and freely, as their advocate and ally.
In his relations with the poor, the labourers, and
the helpless, as he strove to rescue them from
poverty, from hardship, from injustice, and from
sin, he stood in a measure alone. * The rich can
take care of themselves,' he wrote . . . ' but who
can speak for the poor ? ' To speak for the poor
was what he set himself to do, and for twenty-five
years, as Archbishop first, and then as Cardinal,
he performed his chosen office. Only once
did he so far depart from his custom of per
sonal non-interference in political matters as
to vote for a Parliamentary candidate ; but
outside Parliament he constituted himself the

16 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

representative and the spokesman of those who
were dumb.

And the people were not ungrateful. They
remembered — and they forgot. They remembered
his unwearied efforts upon their behalf, his anxious
thought, his pleadings spoken and written, his
fearlessness in braving public opinion, his dis
regard of the protests of friends or counsellors
where their opinions conflicted with his standard
of right and his wider sympathies. And they
forgot, or only remembered to ignore it, that he
was a member of a body they had been taught to
consider alien, and of a creed that the mass of his
countrymen rejected.

CHAPTER II

Appointed Archbishop of Westminster — Social Sympathies
— Beginning Work— Memorial to Cardinal Wiseman —
Educational Projects.

ON Monday, May 8th, 1865, the announcement
reached London that Henry Edward Manning
had been nominated Archbishop of Westminster.
A controversy has been waged over the methods
by which an appointment distasteful to no incon
siderable section of the English Catholic com
munity, lay and clerical, was brought about, and
Manning has been freely charged with connivance
at least in the intrigues of his partisans. To
enter into the merits of the discussion does not
come within the compass of the present work.
That he had earnestly desired the exclusion of
incompetent persons, or of those he considered
incompetent, from a great and responsible post is
undoubtedly true. It was also probably the fact
that he felt himself to be in some respects specially
qualified to fill it — a conviction fully justified by
the event ; whilst in a man not exempt from
human frailties, less worthy motives may have

p 17

i8 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

had their share in shaping his wishes. But unless
we are prepared to believe him capable of a
deliberate falsehood, he had, up to the end of
March, if not later, neither aimed at the promotion
ultimately conferred upon him, desired it, nor con
sidered it probable, reasonable, or imaginable that
he would obtain it.

When, however, it proved that it was his
destiny to be placed at the head of the Catholic
Church in England, there is no reason to doubt
that he rejoiced. He has been accused of ambi
tion, and in more senses than one it is possible
that the accusation is just. If it were ambition,
he once said in reference to a favourite taunt, to
desire to see work done that ought to be done, as
it ought to be done, and when ill done to be done
better, without being the doer of it, so that it were
done at all — if it were ambition to be impatient
when, with the evils and wants and miseries of the
people before them, men did nothing, and if they
would not work, to beg for permission to try to do
the work himself — if this were ambition, he hoped
to die in it.

The retort, with its hot impatience of inertia, its
avowed desire to be up and doing, its transparent
self-confidence, and its very human resentment, is
characteristic both of the merits and of the failings

WESTMINSTER 19

of the writer. The ambition he described was at
all events certainly his, and it may well have
caused him — knowing himself, his capacities and
powers — to rejoice at seeing the means of employ
ing them to the best advantage placed in his hands.
Manning was fifty-six when appointed to the
Archbishopric of Westminster ; and, making his
own reckoning, looked on to fifteen additional
years of labour. Eleven more were, as it proved,
to be added to the tale ; and those twenty-six
years, with short intervals spent abroad, or on the
northern tours he misnamed his holidays, were
passed, at first in the house in York Place which
had served as a residence to his predecessors, and
afterwards in Archbishop's House, close to the
Vauxhall Bridge Road, a bare and dreary building
originally erected as the Guard's Institute, and
acquired by the diocese of Westminster in the
year 1 872. Here he lived ; here he carried on his
multifarious labours until the end, in the midst of
a population belonging to the poorest and most
necessitous — to some it would have seemed the
most hopeless — class of the London poor. Con
gregated together within a stone's throw of the
houses of the rich were crowds of Irish, living
under conditions making the decencies of life
difficult, if not impossible — Irish who had pre-

20 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

served, amidst alien surroundings, the traditions,
religious and national, of their race; others who,
having lost their own virtues, had failed to acquire
those of the country wherein they were dwellers,
and who still clung together, filling the houses in
the lowest quarters of the district, and divided by
a curious and intangible line of demarcation from
their English neighbours.

The Westminster Manning knew is swiftly
passing away. One by one the streets where the
poor were wont to herd are being demolished, to
make way for public buildings or dwelling-places
for the rich. As in other parts of the city, Dives
is banishing Lazarus to a more convenient dis
tance from his gates. Forty years ago the pro
blems the Archbishop was bent upon solving
were vividly exemplified in the life of the people
occupying the district where his home was to be
fixed. In few places could the extremes of wealth
and poverty have met more closely, jostled one
another more visibly, or pressed themselves with
more urgency upon the attention of philanthropist
or reformer. If the new Archbishop had been
ambitious of work, work lay ready to his hand.
But though impatient to begin his labours, he
flung himself into them with no undue haste. On
the day following his consecration, he left England

EARLIER WORK 21

to spend a month in France and Switzerland, and
to take breath before embarking on his new life.
It was a life thereafter to know few holidays.
Reminded, some weeks before his death, of a visit
paid to Penzance twenty- three years earlier, f It
was complete rest,' he said, ' I came back, and
have never known any since/ adding, c Post equitem
sedet atra cum! Perhaps it was well that even
his eager and strenuous spirit could not forecast
all the ceaseless labour and anxiety that was to
crowd the coming years.

In forming an estimate of the work done and
the position he achieved during those years, it
should be remembered that not so much as the
foundations of his reputation as a social reformer
had been laid at this time. Not the least remark
able feature of his career, taken as a whole, is the
total absence of any previous active or definite
intervention in public or secular affairs. In the
period elapsing between his submission to the
Catholic Church and his appointment to the
Archbishopric of Westminster, as well as during
his earlier ministry, his attitude had been that of a
sympathetic spectator of the struggle for existence
carried on by the lower classes, rather than of a
leader in the fight with which he was afterwards
to be identified.

22 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Up to the time of his conversion, if his horizon
had not been bounded and limited by the Anglican
Church, his principal interests — since early aspira
tions after a political career had been aban
doned — were connected with that body and the
crisis through which it was passing. So engrossed
was he indeed by ecclesiastical questions that,
though belonging in theory and principle to the
party of reform, no mention of the Repeal of the
Corn Laws, or of any kindred measure, finds a
place in his diary for the years 1844-7.

His abstention from public action had not,
it is true, implied indifference to the condition
of the poor. During the years passed in his
Sussex parish, he had served an apprenticeship
in practical knowledge of the working classes ;
had been laying the foundations of that acquaint
ance with them justifying his assertion, made
many years later, that if he knew anything,
he knew the working people of England ;
and had acquired a conversancy with their just
grievances forming a basis for that conviction of
the necessity of change he afterwards held so
strongly. Brought into intimate and personal
relations with the Sussex agricultural labourers,
he had ever been solicitous for their welfare and
pitiful over their sufferings ; the experience he had

EARLIER WORK 23

gained of their hardships had sunk deep into
his heart, bearing fruit in the unwearying efforts
of his after life to better the conditions of all labour
ing classes alike ; and in a charge delivered in
the year 1845, as Archdeacon of Chichester, a
note was struck serving in some sort as a prelude
to his future work. Lamenting the grinding
poverty, the unrelenting round of labour, embitter
ing the spirit of the English poor, he pleaded
their cause. * Time,' he urged, ' must be redeemed
for the poor man. The world is too hard upon
him, and makes him pay too heavy a toll out of
his short life.'

Yet though his views and outlook in these early
years caused him to be termed by his brother-in-
law, Bishop Wilberforce, a Radical, there had
been little, as regarded the outer world, to justify
the appellation. His powers were chiefly devoted
to the quiet and patient performance of parochial
and diocesan duties, and, whilst neither blind nor
indifferent to the evils afterwards absorbing him
to so great an extent, he took no personal part in
their redress. If he had chosen his flag, he was
still a soldier in barracks. It is curious to reflect
that, had he died before the age of fifty-six, he
would have been remembered as an ecclesiastic
alone ; and the speculation is interesting whether,

24 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

had he continued to fill a subordinate post, he
would have been content to the end to occupy the
sphere of work marked out for him by his superiors.
Until he was in the position of a leader, the call to
active service on behalf of his social convictions
had not apparently sounded in his ears ; and for
fourteen years after the day when, feeling that he
had lost everything, he left one field of labour to
enter upon another, he continued his old practice
of taking no prominent part in public affairs out
side the limits of the purely ecclesiastical or
religious domain.

Many reasons may have contributed to restrict
him to this course of action. He had passed
through a crisis, mental and spiritual, following
upon years of doubt and conflict ; and had cut
himself adrift from old associations after a fashion
necessarily acutely painful to a man past middle
life, of whom all the deepest interests of his man
hood were affected by the change. To the ques
tion, put to him at this time by one of his rela
tions, why he was called cold, he made the signifi
cant reply that he felt, in truth, so much, that
were he to express it he would lose self-control.
The trial ' which to be known must be endured,'
may have left him a prey to that species of lassi
tude not infrequently following upon continued

THE ENGLISH CATHOLICS 25

effort and strain, and have paralysed for a time
initiative energy in other directions. ' Da mar-
tiro venni a questa pace,' he quoted, in reference
to this phase of his existence.

He was also a foreigner in a new environment.
He has given a description of the effect produced
upon him by the atmosphere into which he was
suddenly plunged at his conversion.

'When I came,' he wrote, 'from the broad
stream of the English commonwealth into the
narrow community of the English Catholics, I
felt as if I had got into St. James' Palace in 1687.
It was as stately as the House of Lords, and as
unlike the English Commonwealth as my father's
mulberry velvet court dress was to his common-
day blue coat and brass buttons. The old Catholic
Toryism is the Toryism of Laud and Stafford's
instincts, feelings, and traditions, without reason,
principle, or foundation in the law of England at
any time from King Alfred to Queen Victoria.
The Catholics of England seem to me to be in
their politics like the Seven Sleepers.' 1

Into this community Manning had entered, a
foreign element, ardent in the Catholicism for which

1 It has been objected that the English Catholics of whom he
wrote were mostly Whigs, rather than Tories. The atmosphere of
the two parties, so far as social objects and aims — all important in
his eyes — were concerned, was probably much the same.

26 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

he had sacrificed so much, extreme in theological
views ; but with the stamp left upon him by his
past, by the life of the public school boy and the
Oxford undergraduate, and the years of inter
course with men of all opinions that had followed ;
and with a growing desire to reassert his claim to
full participation in the national life.

If, however, there was little danger that the
neophyte would be infected by the lofty inertia
and dignified quiescence of his new associates, he
may have considered it wise to proceed with
caution, to find his feet in his fresh surroundings,
and to prove the weapons placed in his hands
before flinging himself into the fight. He may
also have thought it well to allow the fellow-
workers he had left to become accustomed to his
change of front before attempting co-operation in
matters with regard to which he was still in a
position to make common cause with them. What
is certain is that he was no sooner installed
at Westminster, and supreme in power, than he
gave proof of the direction in which that power
would be exercised.

It was perhaps characteristic of the man that
his first care should have been for the young. An
old legend tells how, in his native land beyond
the seas, St. Patrick heard a cry from afar as of

WORK FOR CHILDREN 27

children pleading for help, and that never there
after could he rest until he had succoured them.
The cry of children, in pain or in distress, never
sounded in vain in Archbishop Manning's ears.
A child's needless tear, he once said, was a blood-
blot on this earth. Not by words only, but by
acts, he was indefatigable in striving to better
their lot, and when death had withdrawn him from
the scene of his labours, Mr. Benjamin Waugh,
who has done a work of such incalculable value
in mitigating children's sufferings, came forward
to testify to his eager co-operation and sympathy.
In this case, as in the case of the accounts given
by toilers in other fields of his ever ready interest,
counsel, and encouragement, it is difficult to
realise that the special work, however great, could
be no more than a side path of his own labours —
a single one out of the manifold questions with
which he was daily called upon to deal. But none
who brought him their troubles, perplexities, and
difficulties, went away disappointed. He possessed
the invaluable faculty of throwing himself into
whatever subject was under discussion as if its
importance was for the moment paramount ; and
the very multiplicity of his interests may have
enabled him to take a truer, saner, view of each
than was possible for the man to whom it

28 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

constituted the sole and absorbing object of
unremitting anxiety. To the service of the several
toilers who sought his advice he brought the fresh
ness of a mind by which the case in point was
weighed and reduced to its proper dimensions, and
expectations were limited by possibility. He knew,
no one better, that success in any department could
not be uninterrupted ; he was proof against the
discouragement often overtaking the man whose
labour lies in a single direction ; and was well
aware that permanent work — work destined to
endure — could not be hurried.

More especially he recognised that this was
the case with regard to those very reforms he
had at heart. Painfully convinced of the para
mount need that domestic life should be made
possible for the poor — as it is not, in many cases
and in any true sense, possible under present
conditions — he also knew that the state of children
brought up in homes that are no homes can only
be truly ameliorated by far-reaching changes of
gradual growth. To rectify a single evil, a detail
of a whole vicious system, even were it possible to
do so, is only to cut down a poison plant, leaving
the root untouched. The work of radical
amendment is not to be accomplished in a day.
Public opinion must first be created, and the very

WORK FOR CHILDREN 29

fact of the existence of a great and urgent need is
proof that to supply it will take time.

That a thorough and immediate cure of an
evil could not be expected, constituted, however,
in his eyes no excuse for neglecting the attempt
to minimise the effects of the disease ; and the
cause of children — the first to which he was, as
Archbishop, to set his hand — appealed to him
with special force. He loved them not only with
the abstract and impersonal love of a man charged
with the care of their souls ; but with the warm
human affection leading him, in his old age, to go
amongst them as they played in the parks, talk to
them there, and give them his blessing.

'You do not know how I love my little
children/ he said to those who feared fatigue for
him when, shortly before his death, he visited a
poor school and distributed with his own hands
the gifts prepared for them. And whilst not a
child was outside the range of his interest and
pity, he had a duty to perform towards those for
whose welfare he was directly responsible. Like St.
Patrick, he had heard the cry of twenty thousand
children — children in no distant land but at his very
door, neglected, untaught, uncared for, serving in
the streets of London their apprenticeship to crime
and misery ; and was eager to respond to it.

30 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

'For two and twenty years,' he wrote in 1887,
of the care of the young, 'these thoughts have
weighed upon me ; and I felt that of all the souls
committed to my charge those that were most in
peril were the souls of little children.'

The statement reads strangely. It may perhaps
be interpreted as signifying, not that the souls of
children were in greater danger than others, but
that, possessing more possibilities of redemption,
they had also more to lose ; and it gives the key
to the impatience of the new Archbishop to be up
and doing on their behalf, and to his firmness in
consistently refusing to subordinate their needs to
the other requirements of the diocese.

' My first thought/ he wrote to Monsignor
Talbot when the momentous decision had been
taken at Rome, and he had received tidings of his
appointment to Westminster, ' my first thought,
on that Monday when the letter from Propaganda
came, was of the twenty thousand children in
London, and I hope with God's help to do some
thing for them.'

The idea had indeed crossed his mind that a
memorial to the dead Cardinal might take the
form of providing education and care for the
young of his flock. This hope had been destroyed
even before his consecration ; and at a meeting

THE MEMORIAL TO WISEMAN 31

of influential Catholics it was decided that a
Cathedral at Westminster would be the fittest
monument to its first Archbishop. At a second
gathering at Willis's Rooms, at which the Arch
bishop-elect presided, he bestowed his formal
approval upon the scheme and contributed a
thousand pounds towards it. Having done so, he
proceeded at once to make an urgent appeal for
an object he had still more at heart — the rescuing
of the destitute, ignorant, and uncared for children
of the London streets. To save these children
was, he said, his first duty — the first duty of
London Catholics.

Sir Charles Clifford made reply, no doubt
expressing the sentiments of most of those present,
by drily drawing attention to the purpose of the
meeting — namely, the collection of funds for the
erection of a Cathedral as a memorial to the late
Cardinal. The question of the children was beside
the mark.

The audience were enthusiastically in favour of
the original scheme, and ;£ 16,000 was given or
promised on the spot.

Opposition would have been both unfair and
impolitic; but whilst Cardinal Wiseman's successor
pledged himself to co-operate cordially in the
projected memorial, his heart remained fixed

32 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

upon the work to which it had been preferred.
A note in his journal, dated 1878-82, includes his
own account of the matter, and explains his
conduct with regard to it. ' When Cardinal
Wiseman's friends/ he then wrote, ' . . . resolved
to build a cathedral as a memorial of him,
I assented ; but when I was appointed by Pius
IX. and presided before consecration at a meeting
in Willis's Rooms for that purpose, I said that I
accepted it with all my heart, but that first I
must gather in the poor children. I hope I have
kept my word, for I bought the land, and some
thousands are given and others left for the
building. But could I leave twenty thousand
children without education, and drain my friends
and my flock to pile up stones and bricks?'
And he went on to record the result of his
labours. ' The work of the poor children may be
said to be done. We have nearly doubled the
number in schools, and there is schoolroom for
all. . . . My successor may begin to build a
cathedral.'

From first to last he made no secret of his
unpopular preference. In 1874, at a meeting of
the Diocesan Education Fund, he publicly reiter
ated his intention of subordinating the erection of
the great church to the welfare of those who

WORK FOR CHILDREN 33

should fill it, repeating what he had said when
the plan was first under consideration — that
when the work of the poor children in London
had been accomplished, and not till then, he
would be ready to promote it. ' I will never pile
stone upon stone until souls have been built up in
the spiritual church which is the true cathedral
of Westminster.' The Jews, he added, had a
proverb, full of charity, declaring that even the
building of the Temple must be suspended that
the children might be taught. In the spirit of
that proverb he had acted, and he would be
content to leave the happiness of laying the first
stone to the man who followed him, if he himself
could see the work of the poor children of London
accomplished. •

It was inevitable that the line he took should
be misunderstood and to a certain degree resented
by men who did not share his enthusiasm, and
who were excusably and not unnaturally bent
upon placing before the world an outward and
visible sign of the faith so long proscribed, and
whose claims had only lately been vindicated in
their native country. It is curious to note the
coolness with which his zeal, though closely
connected with Roman Catholic interests, was
regarded by such a man as his friend and

34 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

partisan, Monsignor Talbot. The Roman ecclesi
astic plainly felt that the new Archbishop might
be in danger of squandering his gifts and wasting
his opportunities.

' Of course you must not neglect the poor/ he
allowed, in response to Manning's first intimation
of the species of labours crowding to his mind.
* But many can do that work ; few have the
influence that you have — I may say, no one — on
the upper classes of Protestants.' Writing some
months later, the same tone is perceptible. After
a perfunctory admission that he is glad that the
Archbishop is turning his attention to the London
poor, Talbot adds, with a suspicion of contempt,
that he will find many to co-operate in that work.
It appealed to the heart of utilitarians, and all
parties would be prepared to support it.

With regard to the education scheme which
was Manning's first care, generous help was
indeed given ; so that a year later he was in a
position to make what he looked upon as a
real beginning to the work so urgently required.
Nevertheless, writing in May 1866, to announce
the summoning of a meeting for the purpose of
forming a fund for the poor children, he com
plained that there were men whom he could not
get to believe in their existence, c Oakeley, . . .

EDUCATIONAL SCHEMES 35

after having said that all our Catholic children
are in school, now admits that there are twelve
thousand without education. I am sure there
are twenty thousand ; but I will work with twelve
thousand, which is sad and bad enough.'

The meeting, preceded by a pastoral circular,
was successful ; and writing in joy and hope to
Talbot, after it had taken place, the Archbishop
was able to announce the inauguration of a Dio
cesan Fund, and to state that the work of educa
tion had been placed upon a permanent footing.

1 1 look upon this only as a beginning/ he
added, ' and thank God for it. I know your heart
will be in the work.'

Notwithstanding the persistent confidence dis
played by Manning in his sympathy, Talbot's
congratulations are again singularly devoid of
warmth, and reflect a condition of mind very
different from that of his friend. Perhaps in the
same way that in latter day warfare the fact that the
enemy is almost invisible must have done much
to eliminate the ardour of hatred animating those
who in earlier times met their foes in hand to
hand combat ; so it was natural that the outlook
of the distant spectator should differ from that of
the man fighting sin and poverty and ignorance
at close quarters at home. There was not much

36 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

that was supernatural in the zeal of English
Catholics, wrote Talbot in reply to the Arch
bishop's letter : Manning was, however, wise in
making use of their philanthropic sympathies.
He himself had always taken the greatest interest
in the London poor ; but in order to save their
souls, not merely to make them more respectable
members of society — the Protestant view of such
matters, unfortunately shared by many Catholics.
And the Archbishop must not shorten his days
by overwork, and should never himself do what a
priest could do for him.

A greater contrast between the spirit of rose-
water charity thus displayed, and the burning
compassion for ruined lives spurring on the man
to whom the letter was addressed, can scarcely be
conceived ; and in the midst of his gladness at
the response to his appeal, the veiled admonitions
the letter contained must have struck coldly on the
Archbishop. But the first step had been taken,
the initial work he had projected on behalf of the
London poor had been inaugurated, and, under
these circumstances, he could the more readily
dispense with congratulation.1

1 It has been estimated that approximately ^"350,000 was ulti
mately contributed throughout the country to the ' Catholic Edu
cation Crisis Fund.' — 'Cardinal Manning.' Hutton, p. 171.

EDUCATIONAL LABOURS 37

Into the details of the labours he thenceforward
carried on in connection with education, his cease
less and unwearied efforts to place it upon what
he considered a proper footing, and to ensure to
it a religious basis, it is impossible to enter. His
policy on this point, the terms he strove to
exact from successive Governments, and in large
measure succeeded in securing, were, in contrast
to his attitude on other questions, of a distinctly
reactionary type. In regard to this matter almost
solely, he joined his forces to those of the Con
servative party; urging the right of voluntary
schools to a share of the support from the rates
bestowed upon the School Board; acting, from
1884 onwards, in concert with the Voluntary
Schools Association, including the Anglican and
Wesleyan bodies ; pressing upon public notice the
alleged failure of secular education in America
and France; and going so far, in 1885, in view
of the education question, as to support Conser
vative candidates. In 1886 he was given a place
on the Royal Commission appointed to deal with
the question of Primary Schools, his influence
being plainly apparent in its Report ; and before
he died he had the satisfaction of witnessing the
triumph of his principles in the IDS. granted by
the Free Education Act for each child in volun-

38 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

tary schools. The result must have surpassed
his hopes, and he may well have been satisfied.

In proof of the important share ascribed to
him in obtaining the settlement, it is sufficient to
quote the words addressed to him the previous
year, on the occasion of his episcopal jubilee, by
Sir H. Francis Sandford, who declared that he
felt from his heart that if England was to remain,
so far as education was concerned, a Christian
country, it would be to his Eminence that that
result would be largely due.

CHAPTER III

The Archbishop's Methods — Loneliness — 'A Fireman on
Duty' — Aspirations for his Flock — His I deal of a Bishop
— Characteristics.

AND so the new Archbishop entered upon his
labours. 'Many can do that work/ Monsignor
Talbot had written with reference to that toil for
the poor of which his friend's heart was full. What
they could not do, what none could do as well as
he, was work connected with another and a
higher class. If the Archbishop made no protest,
his silence did not imply assent. Explanation
would have failed to convince. His life would
be the answer.

Many could do that work. Many, certainly,
could have visited, as he did, the poorest missions in
his diocese, but not all would have brought to the
men carrying on their uphill labour in those
districts the encouragement drawn from the fact
that their chief had seen it with his own eyes.
Many could have penetrated, as he did, into the
lowest quarters of the city ; could have spent
winter evenings, as he did, talking to men straight

40 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

from their work in the street or in the dockyard,
as they stood or sat around him, 'discussing,
attending, questioning, suggesting,' but second
hand reports of the misery and evil with which
he was to grapple, would not have brought
him into touch with the mass of his people, or
produced the intimate acquaintance with their
condition and circumstances finding its expression
in his work. Many could have preached as he did
to the prisoners in the gaol chapel, but not with
the effect described by the Fenian, Boyle O'Reilly,
when he told of the stranger in the violet cassock
who stood before that melancholy audience ; of
the attitude of sullen inattention assumed by the
convicts as they heard him introduce the well worn
theme of the Prodigal Son — a type of repentance
of whom they were weary ; of the unaccustomed
tears which presently rose to the eyes of his
hearers, as in simple language the speaker called
up memories of home and of parents left desolate
and broken-hearted ; and of how, as he ended, some
of the men were sobbing ; O'Reilly himself, severe
as had been the Archbishop's condemnation of
his own party, declaring that, apart from the
love he bore him on account of his devotion to
Ireland, that sermon had endeared the preacher
to him for life.

PERSONAL MINISTRY 41

He knew the way to men's hearts ; he possessed,
as few have possessed to a like degree, the secret
of winning their confidence and love ; and to none,
however zealous and devoted, would he delegate
the duty of personal ministry. Many could have
done, or tried to do, the work he had chosen.
Few or none could have done it as he did it ; few
or none could have left the mark he left.

If a just estimate is to be formed of actions, the
spirit in which they are performed must be under
stood, since that alone lends them their moral and
subjective value. Motives must be discovered,
giving to each its character, conferring upon each
its worth, and placing the failure of one man in
comparably above the success achieved by another.

In some cases this is difficult; it is a hard
matter to penetrate to the hidden springs setting
the visible machinery at work. Conjecture is all
that can be hazarded. But there are special
facilities for arriving at conclusions with regard to
Cardinal Manning. In days to come, when the
evening shadows were falling, and his labours
were drawing towards their close, he was accus
tomed, in leisure moments, to review his past, and
to note its characteristics, its phases, its temptations
and its successes, with something of the impartial
interest of a spectator. In these autobiographical

42 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

notes, perhaps intended in the first instance for no
eye save his own, the inner existence of which
action was no more than the outward expression
and clothing, is found revealed, and the nature of
the man, the source of his influence, makes itself
known.

The traces found in these records of past
ambitions, hopes renounced, serve to throw into
clearer relief the lines upon which his later years
were moulded. * I had a haunting feeling,' he
wrote after reading Macaulay's biography, 'that
his had been a life of public utility, and mine a
vita timbratilis — a life in the shade, passive and of
little result. For this life little enough . . . but
perhaps if I had not broken with the world I
might not have been saved.'

Again, he draws a comparison between his own
career and Gladstone's — Gladstone, who had begun
life as a Tory, he himself having been from the
first a ' Mosaic Radical ' — pronouncing upon his
early friend with generous admiration. The
statesman's career had been for the people, always
widening out ; he was now the leader of a demo
cracy which need not be a revolution if the upper
classes had the manhood, common-sense and self-
denial, to mix with the people and lead them.
Gladstone's had been a great career ; the work of

LONELINESS 43

his life was manifest in this world. * I hope/ said
the Cardinal — he was writing in 1882 — ' mine may
be in the next/ For thirty years he added, he
could scarcely have been more separate from the
world. Yet, during the last ten or fifteen, he had
again been mixed up with the English people in
many ways, always by their invitation. And the
touch of wistfulness perceptible as he set his own
life beside that of his former comrade disappears.

Nevertheless an impression of loneliness is
forced upon the reader of these scattered notes
— the impression of an existence led apart, cut
off not only from the ties of old affection, but
from any subsequent intimacies. One looks in
vain for any trace of close or familiar friendship —
a friendship of the kind, for instance, binding him
to Gladstone before the paths of the two diverged.
Men there doubtless were strongly linked to him
by affection and loyalty, but his position towards
them was for the most part, necessarily and in
evitably, that of the superior. Whereas friendship,
using the term in its highest sense, demands, if
not perfect equality, at least that the relative
value of what each friend bestows should on the
whole be justly balanced. 'Too disinterested a
love becomes nothing but very generous alms/ is
a wise saying.

44 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Friendship moreover, like most other things
worth having, demands leisure. Some persons
voluntarily crowd life in a fashion to exclude it.
To others circumstances render the art difficult, if
not impossible. Counterfeits — not without their
value — take its place. Men are swept together by
common aims or objects, with the result that their
outer lives are closely and intimately associated.
Nor is the union, so far as it goes, other than real
and genuine. Penetrate, however, below the sur
face, and you may find a total absence of the
bond welding man to man independently of
what may be termed accidental contact. The
very stress of work responsible for existing ties
may have precluded the formation of those born,
not of community of labour or of interests, but
of the intangible and indefinable attraction, the
personal affinity, described by Montaigne as the
sole explanation of the veritable link — ' parceque
c'etait moi — parceque c'etait lui.'

Whether this was the case with Manning
must remain undetermined. It is not for a
stranger to judge. For him deep friendships may
have existed. To those who study the records of
his later life, so far as they are accessible, such
friendships are not apparent. Surrounded by
disciples, sought daily by mendicants in need of

LONELINESS 45

advice, comfort, or encouragement, his sympathy,
his care, his anxious thought, were at the service
of all. But something corresponding in the
philanthropist to the 'egoisme de 1'artiste' — an
egoism which, though not personal, limited his vivid
interests to the sphere wherein his wider love
of humanity found free scope, may have con
sciously or unconsciously caused him to close the
door upon those who might otherwise have
penetrated to the inner sanctuary of his affections.
' In intimate contact/ said Father Butler, the man
who perhaps knew him better than any other,
' you perceived that in his whispers in conversation,
his dreams at night, his confidences given into
sympathetic ears, he was the same as the orator,
the ruler, or the counsellor of Holy Church.' The
words, eulogistic as they are, corroborate the
suspicion that his inner life was lived alone. It is
not as orator, ruler, or counsellor of state that
friend reveals himself to friend.

A special feature of his character, as it unfolds
itself in actions and words, was a combination of
opposites. There was something of the charm of
unexpectedness in his commerce with life. ' An
anchorite who did dwell, with the whole world for
cell,' he was also a man of the world ; if in some
respects he approximated to the ancient ideal of

46 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

an ecclesiastic, he was in another sense markedly
and essentially modern ; if in the theological
domain he stood across the threshold and barred
the way to novel thought, he was eager to lead
men forward in other directions in what might be
termed by some critics dangerous paths. With a
certain severity tenderness mingled to a singular
degree ; he could sorrow over the fate of a
Boulanger, dead on a woman's grave ; and be
moved to the point of emotion as the pale-faced
child of a carpenter recalled the home at Nazareth.

His love for souls was individual no less than
collective. For each single one he had solici
tude — even anxiety — to spare. ' Pride has kept
you from religion,' he once warned a woman,
' and from sin,' he added, and his eyes were full of
tears. f A stern ecclesiastic he might be/ wrote
some one, 'but the poor did not think so. ...
The penitents of the streets did not think him
austere, nor the inebriates, nor even those, thrice
unhappy, who . . . had lost their faith.' To be
unhappy, from whatever cause, was to possess a
claim upon him never disallowed.

If he lived in a measure alone, it was by
deliberate choice. Watching, from the centre of
London, what went on around him with keen
attention, and endowed with every gift fitting him

A LIFE LED APART 47

to take and keep his place among his lay equals,
he elected, so far as merely social intercourse was
concerned, to live a priest with priests ; entering
the world, to use his own phrase, only as a fire
man on duty. In spite of his varied activities
and eager study of the problems of the day,
his outlook remained the outlook of an
ascetic. He had accepted his losses in the spirit
of an ascetic ; he used his opportunities in the
same spirit. Looking back upon the past, he
discerned in each forfeited possibility — in what to
some men would have represented the wasted
chances of life — a divine interposition, a danger
escaped, a catastrophe averted ; and, within sight
of his goal, he would trace the course of the events
which had made him what he was, and recognize
in all Oat had passed the presence of a master
hand. The aspirations of his early years, his
political ambitions, his natural ties, everything
had been taken from him — he had become as dead
to all as if in another world, and, severing his
connection with the past, had become a man cui
patria est ecclesia.

It seems necessary to dwell upon this spirit of
apartness — this separateness from the life around
him, since it may, perhaps, supply some part of
the explanation of his power and influence with

48 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

the poor. He came to them, not as an occasional
visitant from another sphere, but as belonging to
a neutral territory, his vision unclouded by the
prejudices unconsciously contracted in an antagon
istic environment.

Though occupying this attitude, and remaining,
except when some definite purpose was to be
served, in a measure apart, he was from the
first keenly conscious of the position, with regard
to the national life, of the members of his
flock ; and in no way desired on their behalf the
existence he had chosen for himself. Yet there
were difficulties in the way of altering -hat had
become a tradition of the Catholic body. The
mass of his priests and people, of Irish extraction,
had been born in animosity, civil and religious,
to the English State. Faithful to their nation
and race, hostility to an unjust and dominant
power ran in their blood, tending to keep them
aloof, alien and suspicious, from participation
in the life and interests, public and private, of
their fellow-citizens. Nor was this spirit confined
to the Irish, many of their English co-religionists
being rendered by prejudice scarcely less in
capable and useless. Nevertheless life, civil and
political, lay open to these men, provided they

CATHOLIC TRADITIONS 49

knew how to enter it, and to bear themselves
when there; and in the Archbishop's eyes (the
withdrawal of Catholics from the active service of
the commonwealth and the non-fulfilment of the
duties of citizens and patriots was a dereliction of
duty and unlawful in itself.' It was perhaps no
wonder, he admitted in 1880, that the antagonism
aroused by the Penal Laws should have continued
as a personal sentiment, and that those who
had been subject to them should, when their
disabilities were removed, feel no ambition or
desire for public life. But it was a disaster — a
1 politique d'effacement.' That they should learn
to make use of their opportunities he was keenly
anxious — anxious too that they should be so
equipped as to meet their countrymen — neces
sarily opposed to them on certain subjects — on
equal terms. If they were to be a power in the
world, and he wished to make them a power, he
knew that it could not be done by shaping them
in a mould that had become obsolete. To attempt
it would have been a suicidal system. 'They
cannot meet [others],' he wrote, 'without being
forced into the time spirit. We do not live in an
exhausted receiver. The Middle Ages are past.
There is no zone of calms for us. We are in the

modern world — in the trade-winds of the nine-

D

50 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

teenth century — and we must brace ourselves to
lay hold of the world as it grapples with us, and
to meet it, intellect to intellect, culture to culture,
science to science.'1

Whilst he would have had the lay members of his
flock take an active part in public life, there were
obligations he recognised as specially binding upon
the clergy. The Gospel precepts, as he read them,
did no more than strengthen and expand the dictum
of Terence, Homo sum et humani nikil a me alienum.
By each civilised man everything affecting human
suffering and the state of the people should be
noted and tended. If priests and bishops could
not multiply loaves or heal lepers, they could be
prompt and foremost in working with all who
laboured to relieve suffering, sorrow, and misery.
How, he pondered, was that mass of suffering,
sorrow, and misery to be reached ? This was the
question present with him at all times, as his eyes
rested on the modern world and appraised its
needs and its condition. Outside the visible
church the power of good was, it was true, plainly
to be discerned carrying on its work ; and strenu-

1 With these sentiments, it was a singular fact that it should
have been Manning who set his face, steadily and persistently,
against the frequenting of English universities by members of his
flock; thus depriving those by whom his authority was respected
of the educational advantages enjoyed by non- Catholics.

AIMS AND IDEALS 51

ously and generously he testified to its presence
in bodies divided from Catholic unity, protesting
against the narrowness that would limit the
Spirit of God. ' The soul of the church/ he
once said, 'is as old as Abel, and as wide as
the race of mankind.' But, in spite of all, the
human spirit, as distinguished from the divine,
dominated Christian society. Were it not so,
London could never have become what it was.
And how to reach it, how to bring healing to the
ills he saw ? * The world is dying positus in mal-
ignol he said, 'and we must go into it through fire.'
If his confidence in the capacity of his faith to
win back the godless multitude was great, it was
not upon the intellect — though he desired its
cultivation — that he relied to do the work. But
human love, care, brotherhood, the law and power
of the Incarnation, might draw the human will,
lost through past sin and misery, into the divine
presence. Bishops and priests were happily in
dependent, detached from the world, its titles,
wealth, privileges.1 Woe to him who should

1 The independence of the Church in England was a constant
matter of rejoicing to him. ' When will you have done with the
Concordat?' he asked in the course of a conversation reported in
the Libre Parole. . . . ' The Church has never suffered by the
poverty of her members. Look at us. We have suffered. But
how great is our freedom ! '

52 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

entangle the church with governments and poli
tics. Woe to the bishop of party or prejudice.
And then follows his own ideal — the standard he
set up for the man who should worthily fill his
office.

' He should be human and Christian, human in
all sympathy with the creatures of God, from the
sorrows of men to the sufferings of the animal
world ; Christian in the charity of God and man,
to friends and to enemies, in tenderness of heart,
self-sacrifice, humility and patience. Sin, sorrow,
and suffering, not only in the unity of the church,
but out of it, ought to command his sympathy
and service.'

Few will be found to deny that from first to last,
as Archbishop and as Cardinal, Henry Edward
Manning carried out his precepts, and adhered to
the line he had traced. More and more he was
destined to become a force to be taken into
account. Often referred to at a later date in
foreign papers, ' by a very pardonable mistake,' as
Archbishop of Canterbury or of London, his
influence was the greater because untrammelled
by the fetters belonging to the official position of
those with whom he was confounded.

There was another factor to which his power
was due. Some men may preserve independence

CHARACTERISTICS 53

of party, and may yet be the slave of public
opinion, hampered by the fear of giving offence.
Manning's independence was displayed, not in one
direction alone, but in all. He may have loved
popularity ; he never hesitated to risk it by
running counter, where principle was involved, to
public or private sentiment ; nor did he shrink
from proclaiming his convictions. With unbounded
charity towards the professors of opinions he re
garded as erroneous, he combined the frank con
demnation of their doctrines. He was as ready
to face the accusation of bigotry from the one
camp as that of socialism from the other.

An element in his character not devoid of moral
danger also contributed to make men trust him.
He trusted himself. His confidence in his judg
ment, depriving him to some extent of the benefit
and help to be derived from counsel and advice,
served to steady his hand and to straighten the
course he pursued to reach his end. He was
rarely, if ever, in the condition of the man who is
paralysed by doubt.

* There is only room for one true fear in a man/
he once said, when failure, partial or transitory,
threatened a cause he had deeply at heart, * that
fear is that he may be wrong. When that fear
has been banished, there is no room for any other/

54 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

The suspicion that he might be wrong, self-
distrust or diffidence — qualities not without their
merits, but crippling to action — were no features of
the Cardinal's character. He formed his own
conclusions, and steered his own ship, and whilst
the extreme of self-reliance, the inability to allow
due weight to the opinions of others, has its draw
backs, and is not commonly found in conjunction
with the grace of humility, it is not without its
practical advantages. It was the conviction that
he would be swayed by his sense of justice
alone, by no tenderness for the susceptibilities
of friends or associates, and by no considerations
of expediency or opportunism, that gave him his
influence over other men. They knew that they
had to deal with Henry Edward Manning, whom
they trusted, not with his unknown advisers and
counsellors. As man to man, not as the mouth
piece of a party or a school, he spoke to them,
encouraged them, warned them, or, when he saw
occasion, blamed them. They were assured that
in misfortune or disappointment they could count
upon his support. His disregard of consequences,
compared with the rectitude of the aim, won him
the confidence of the working men of England,
and made them turn to him as a friend to be
relied upon never to betray their cause.

CHAPTER IV

Breach with Mr. Gladstone— the Vatican Decrees— Death
of the Archbishop of Paris— the Agricultural Labourer's
Union— Lecture on the Dignity and Rights of Labour
—Varied Work.

THOUGH Archbishop Manning had lost no time
in setting to work upon the duties belonging to
his new position, his entrance upon any sort of
public life unconnected, or only indirectly con
nected, with his calling was effected gradually.
Even his literary energies had been suspended
since his conversion, and when he took up his
pen it was principally for the purpose of dealing
with religious questions. His attention too was
necessarily engaged by the needs of the diocese
and the difficulty of meeting them.

' If I know how to help you I will/ he wrote to
Monsignor Talbot in October 1867, in answer to
urgent appeals for funds to carry on the building
of an English church in Rome, ' but I am burdened
beyond measure/

And besides and above mere pecuniary and
practical cares, the momentous issues involved in

55

56 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

the coming Vatican Council must have been
pressing upon his mind ; whilst, when it took
place, attendance at it withdrew him from England
during a large portion of the year 1 870.

His share in the proceedings at Rome belongs
to an aspect of his character and career with
which the present volume is not concerned. Con
sequent upon the decrees of the Council, how
ever, was an event of no little importance in his
secular life and carrying with it much pain. This
was the transformation of the estrangement be
tween himself and Mr. Gladstone which had
followed upon his secession from the Church of
England into a definite and open breach, not to
be healed — and then only partially — until after
many years.

The friendship between the two men, each great
in his own sphere, is an interesting chapter in the
history of each. How much it had counted for
in the earlier years of the statesman, is shown by
a letter he addressed to Archdeacon Wilberforce
when, in April 1851, the blow of Manning's
submission to Rome had fallen.

' I do indeed feel the loss of Manning,' he then
wrote, 'if and as far as I am capable of feeling
anything. It comes to me cumulated and doubled
with that of James Hope. Nothing like it can

MANNING AND GLADSTONE 57

ever happen to me again. Arrived now at middle
life I can never form, I suppose, with any other
two men the habits of communication, counsel
and dependence in which I have now for from
fifteen to eighteen years lived with them both.' l
' In a late letter the Cardinal termed it a quarrel,'
Mr. Gladstone wrote long after, ' but in my reply
I told him it was not a quarrel but a death, and
that was the truth.'

The tone of the lament sounds strangely in
the ears of those who, for good or for ill, have
left behind them the days when a change of
religion represented almost necessarily a severance
of the closest ties. In the present case the
separation was for some twelve years complete ;
and though intercourse was in a measure resumed
after that date, the communications which then
passed between the old comrades, though couched
in the language of affectionate intimacy, were for
the most part confined to mere matters of business.
In a letter addressed to a correspondent who had
drawn the Archbishop's attention to the attempt
of a daily paper to damage Mr. Gladstone in public
estimation by insinuations that an understanding
had existed between the two on the question of
the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the

1 ' Life of Gladstone. ' John Morley.

58 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Archbishop, indignantly repudiating the sugges
tion, gave an account both of their former friend
ships and of the suspension of it consequent upon
his conversion. If, in more recent years, official
duties had caused a certain renewal of intercourse,
his communications with Mr. Gladstone, he said,
had only differed from those he had held with
other public men because, whilst they were
strangers, ' Mr. Gladstone was and is the man
whose friendship has been to me one of the most
cherished and valued in my life.' Yet, though
coming forward to clear the minister from any
suspicion he might incur by reason of his
connection with himself, the Archbishop had
clung to the belief that a friendship can con
tinue in spite of divergent opinion, of opposed
interests, and of the absence of all by which
such bonds are cemented. To his indignation at
the attack directed in 1874 by the Liberal leader
against the body he represented, was added
therefore the sting of wounded and personal
feeling.

By some the blow, delivered four years after
the promulgation of the Vatican decrees which
were its ostensible raison detre, was attributed to
anger and disappointment on Gladstone's part at
the rejection of his Irish University Bill by the

MANNING AND GLADSTONE 59

Irish episcopate, and the consequent fall of the
Government. Manning did not share this opinion.
On the night of the defeat he had been told by
the minister that he was without disappointment
and without resentment, and had believed him.
Yet he noted as a curious fact, and somewhat
inconsistently, that the same subject — that of a
University for Ireland — had involved him in
collisions with both the Conservative and Liberal
leaders. ' Disraeli,' he observed, ' kept his head,
but not his temper, Gladstone lost both.'

As a matter of fact, the Archbishop would
have willingly seen the University Bill accepted.
As he and Delane left the House of Commons
together on the night — February 13, 1873 —
that it had been introduced, the latter ob
served that it was a bill ' made to pass/ and
Manning cordially agreed ; writing to Cardinal
Cullen to urge its acceptance. A fortnight later
he informed Gladstone that he had reason to hope
that this would be the case — he himself having
done what he could to promote that end. But
the views of the Irish hierarchy differed from
those of the Archbishop of Westminster, and by
March 7 he was aware of the fact. ' This is
not your fault, nor the bill's fault,' he wrote to
Gladstone after his defeat, 'but the fault of

60 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

England and Scotland, and three anti-catholic
centuries.' 1

The following year came Gladstone's attack.
Whatever might have been its originating cause,
the form it took, in the assertion that, by the
late decrees, Roman Catholics were rendered
incapable of fulfilling the obligations of civil
allegiance, was keenly resented by the Archbishop.
To those who regard the question from the stand
point of the present day, it may seem singular
that so much passion should have been evoked on
either side by a controversy since proved — what
ever may be the case in foreign countries — to have
little practical bearing upon English politics. But
it must not be forgotten that, forty years ago, Mr.
Gladstone's charge was invested, in the eyes of
many of his countrymen, with a dangerous
significance, justifying the heat with which it was
repudiated on all hands. Offensive as it was to
Roman Catholics in general, it was specially so to
a man feeling the rights and duties of citizenship
with peculiar force ; and regarding it in some
sense as a personal insult, the Archbishop lost no
time in replying to the challenge, and in vindi
cating with angry bitterness the loyalty of his
flock.

1 ' Life of Gladstone.' John Morley.

THE VATICAN DECREES 61

From a literary point of view the answer elicited
from Newman, in his letter to the Duke of Norfolk,
remains the most permanent monument of a
battle of words which has long ago lost its
interest ; but to Manning the literary aspect of the
controversy was of small importance. What was
of moment was to set himself and his Church
right in the eyes of a nation who might be misled
by the aspersions cast upon them. Categorically
denying the interpretation placed upon the recent
decrees by Mr. Gladstone, he emphatically
affirmed that, so far from Roman Catholics being
thereby relegated to a position differing from that
occupied by the rest of the nation, their civil
allegiance was divided in no other sense than that
of every man who, recognizing a divine or natural
moral law, admitted the supremacy of conscience
and of the law of God.

The argument is unanswerable, so far as the
theoretical obligation of obedience is concerned.
It will scarcely be contended that human law is
always a synonym for justice, and it would be a
libel upon the ordinary citizen to assert that the
admonitions of conscience, should they chance, in
any particular instance, to conflict with legal
demands, would be less imperative than the
injunctions of a Pope. The penalties in either

62 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

case would be the same, and the lawbreaker must

be prepared to pay them. Argument, however,

rarely convinces ; and it seems strange — had it

not been for his earnest desire to stand well

with his countrymen — that the Archbishop should

have devoted so much trouble and pains to

disprove a charge that time might have been

trusted to dispose of. The death-blow to a

friendship was probably one of its most serious

results; and the encounter of the two old

comrades, apart from the public issues concerned,

presents some curious and interesting features. In

a letter to a newspaper, the Archbishop had,

somewhat inopportunely, adverted to the personal

aspect of the dispute, by the expression of his

regret that a friendship of forty-five years should

be thus for the first time overcast. With the eye

of a politician quick to perceive a danger to his

public reputation, Gladstone foresaw that, should

he permit the words to pass unchallenged, they

might lend colour to the accusation already

brought against him, that not until he had no

longer anything to lose or gain by the Irish vote

had he abandoned an attitude of conciliation ; and

he took the opportunity in a second pamphlet to

qualify the statement as an astonishing error;

thereby drawing forth a private letter from

THE VATICAN DECREES 63

Manning, wherein he reiterated his former asser
tion, and added that his friendship had remained
unaltered by a change affecting outward manifesta
tions alone.

In his reply, Mr. Gladstone, besides making
clear the motive dictating his desire to disclaim
an unbroken friendship, cited, not without justice,
its suspension during a period of twelve years, as
well as more recent accusations and counter-
accusations made and retorted in no moderate
terms in regard to the Italian question.

It would have been better to let the matter rest ;
but with characteristic tenacity the Archbishop
refused to abandon the position he had taken up.
That outward separation had followed upon his
submission to Rome he fully admitted ; that the
inner tie of affection had been consequently
severed he as emphatically denied, so far, that is,
as his own sentiments were concerned. ' It is not
for me,' he wrote, ' to say whether your friendship
for me was already changed. In the midst of our
strong opposition, I still believed it as unchanged
as my own.'

No doubt the statesman was right, the Arch
bishop wrong. To imagine that a friendship,
vulnerable, like all things human, to influences from
without, could remain unaltered through twelve

64 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

years of a silence broken only by outward discord,
was in truth the vision of a dreamer, singular in a
man with so little of the dreamer about him as
Archbishop Manning. By the controversy of
1874-5 tne delusion was effectually dispelled, and
he was left the poorer. ' There is strength as well
as delicacy/ says Frederick Robertson, ' in one
who can still respect, and be just to the memory
of obliterated friendship.' Perhaps neither of these
two had been altogether equal to the strain put
upon them.

Upon the Vatican Council had followed other
important European events — the Franco-Prussian
war, with the invasion of Rome, involving the loss
of the Temporal power, and naturally engrossing
in great measure the attention of a man whose
sympathies were passionately enlisted on the side
of the dispossessed Pope.

By such matters the Archbishop's social work
in England was only affected in so far as they
left him the less leisure to devote to other than
ecclesiastical duties, and may thus have con
tributed to postpone the inauguration of his
secular labours. But in 1871 his presence for
the first time upon a Mansion House Committee
foreshadowed the days when he would be an
almost indispensable member of all such bodies.

AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS' UNION 65

In this case the Committee had been formed for
the purpose of relieving the distress in Paris
consequent upon the war ; and in the communi
cations addressed to his brother prelate, Mon-
seigneur Darboy, Manning was the natural repre
sentative and spokesman of the London Com
mittee. In January, when the eyes of all men
were fixed upon the unfortunate city, it further
became his duty to use his vain endeavours to
avert the doom awaiting its Archbishop, then
fallen into the hands of the Commune, and soon
to become its victim.

But although, during the first years of his
episcopate, the attention and thoughts of the
new Archbishop had been necessarily diverted
in great measure into channels unconnected with
social grievances and their remedies, his convic
tions on subjects of the kind had become known.
In December 1872, an invitation to preside
at a meeting at Exeter Hall on behalf of the
Agricultural Labourers' Union is evidence that
he had then been fully recognised as an ally by
those bent upon bettering the condition of the
poor.

Lest the interests of the newly-founded associa
tion should be injured by the prominence accorded
to him, he declined to occupy the chair. Present

66 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

at the meeting, however, in conjunction with
Sir Charles Trevelyan, Mr. Mundella, Sir Charles
Dilke, Mr. Odgers, Mr. Arch, and others, he took
part in the proceedings, moving the first resolu
tion and urging the necessity of a reconstitution of
the domestic life of the labouring poor. Having
fully testified his sympathy with the objects of
the meeting, it was in strict conformity with his
principles, and in accordance with the intention
he had expressed, that when so notorious and
aggressive an assailant of the Christian religion
as Mr. Bradlaugh appeared upon the platform,
the Archbishop withdrew. He was sorry, he
afterwards said, that the meeting had been
diverted from the purpose for which it was called
and for which he had attended it.

If he had not hesitated to risk giving offence
by making a public stand upon a question of
principle, he was on the other hand in no wise
disturbed by the protests called forth in an
opposite quarter by his presence at Exeter Hall,
or by the charge that he was thereby fanning
the flame of agrarian agitation. That his name
should be coupled with that of Mr. Arch gave
him, he declared, no displeasure. He believed
him to be honest and good, his cause to be well
founded, and trusted in his using no means to

DIGNITY AND RIGHTS OF LABOUR 67

promote it other than those sanctioned by the
law of God and of the land.

That it was becoming increasingly understood
that the Archbishop of Westminster was to be
counted upon as an active and outspoken sup
porter of popular rights, is proved by another
invitation, received two years later, to deliver a
lecture to the members of the Leeds Mechanics'
Institute ; on which occasion he made a public
and full declaration of his convictions on social
matters.1

Selecting the subject of the Dignity and Rights
of Labour, the Archbishop began his address
by an explanation of the motives leading him to
accept a call 'to launch upon a venture so far
beyond his ordinary navigation, and into a deep
he had not sounded ; ' proceeding to reiterate the
views he was holding with a firmer and firmer
grasp as to the duty and necessity of co-operation
between men of divers opinions for the good of
the nation to which all alike belonged. To meet
upon what the president of the Institute had
termed the neutral platform, 'so entirely fell in
with what I conceive to be a high dictate of our

xMr. Purcell places the delivery of this lecture in 1877. Mr.
Hutton ascribes it to March 1876. It may possibly have been
repeated; but the date of January 28, 1874, is that affixed to it
in the 2nd Vol. of Miscellanies, published in 1877.

68 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

duty that I could no longer hesitate. I mean
this — that in everything of private life, and every
thing of domestic and civil and political life, we
have but one common interest — the welfare of our
common country. If there be divergencies, as
there must be, as always have been, and as I fear
there always will be, it seems to me that it is the
duty of every one of us to strive that they should
be suspended at least in every region of our
public and private life wheresoever it is possible.'

The subject he had chosen for treatment was
one upon which his opinions were likely to con
flict with many of the men whose judgment he
would have valued. But it was no part of the
Archbishop's theory of life and conduct to be
over careful in the avoidance of rocks or reefs or
chances of collision ; nor was he used to measure
his language with a view to conciliate public
opinion.

Clearing the way by the statement that labour,
rather than capital or even skill, was the cause of
wealth and the origin of greatness, he proceeded
further to the definition of labour itself. When
worthy of the name, it was the honest exertion of
the powers of body and mind for a man's own
good and that of his neighbour — the law of exist
ence, the law also of development. Capital, on

DIGNITY AND RIGHTS OF LABOUR 69

the other hand, was not money alone, but the
muscular, mental, manual, and mechanical power
created by labour. For the honest labourer,
unskilled as well as skilled, he claimed the
respect due to the dignity of his state and of his
work.

In dealing, after the dignity, with the rights of
labour, he found himself confronted with more
complicated questions ; being careful to preface
what he said by the explanation that he was not
communistic, and — making a not unimportant
distinction — had 'no will to be revolutionary.'
For labour he claimed the rights of property.
With it the possessor could buy and sell, he could
exchange it, set a price upon it. ( I claim for
labour (and the skill which is always acquired by
labour) the rights of capital. It is capital in the
truest sense/ It was, in fact, live money. Dead
capital and live must be united. Whatever rights
were possessed by capital, labour no less possessed.

Labour, moreover, had, amongst its rights, the
right of liberty — the right of the labourer to de
termine where and for whom he would work.
Though in no capricious or extortionate fashion,
he must be judge and controller of his own life,
paying the penalty should he abuse this freedom.
He had also the right to decide upon what wages

70 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

he could subsist, again paying the penalty should
he price his labour too high.

Labour had another right — that of protecting
itself. Throughout the history of civilisation
trades and professions had always been united
together in societies and fellowships. ' It seems
to me that this is a sound and legitimate social
law. I can conceive nothing more entirely in
accordance with natural rights and with the higher
jurisprudence than that those who have one
common interest should unite together for the
promotion of that interest.' Such unions had
always been recognised by the legislature ; em
ployers or employed, those possessing the dead
capital of money or the live capital of labour, had
all been admitted to possess the same rights ; and
so long as men were honestly submissive to the
supreme reign of law, they were justified in form
ing themselves into self-protecting organisations.

And then, whilst professing his adherence to the
laws of supply and demand, free exchange and the
safety of capital, the Archbishop proceeded to avow
his dissent, on one point at least, from the prin
ciples of political economy. Political economists
denounced parliamentary or state interference
with any form soever of supply and demand. He
held, on the contrary, that there were cases in

DIGNITY AND RIGHTS OF LABOUR 71

which the principle of Free Trade was met and
checked by a moral condition. Such, for example,
was the question of the price of intoxicating drink.
Such was the question of the limitation of hours
of labour.

Were the object and end of existence that Eng
land should undersell all other nations, well and
good. But if the domestic life of the people were
more vital, if the peace and purity of homes were
sacred, then hours of labour must be regulated and
limited. Already, at the instance of Lord Shaftes-
bury, the principle of interference had been
admitted by the regulation of child labour.
Parliament should go further in the same direc
tion. The question must be faced ' calmly, justly,
and with a willingness to put labour and the profits
of labour second to the moral state and the
domestic life of the whole working population.'

And lastly he touched briefly upon the miser
able condition of the London poor. * These things/
he said, ' cannot go on ; these things ought not to
go on. The accumulation of wealth in the land,
the piling up of wealth like mountains, in the
possession of classes or of individuals, cannot go
on if these moral conditions of our people are not
healed. No commonwealth can rest on such
foundations.'

72 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

In conclusion, nothing, he asserted, could limit
the rights of the working man, except wrongdoing.
If he committed a wrong action, the strong might
retaliate. If he did no wrong, the supreme power
of law was there to protect him.

In the principles thus enunciated there was no
attempt at originality or novelty. That they
should be avowed by a Roman Catholic dignitary,
invited to address a body of British workmen,
formed in some sort a new departure, and was as
certain to draw forth unfavourable comment in
some quarters as it was to commend the Arch
bishop to those struggling for their legitimate
rights. But from first to last he never shrank
from the open expression of his opinions, more
especially with regard to what he described in the
last year of his life as the three gangrenes in
evitably destroying the life of the English common
wealth — its human and domestic life — for the
enrichment of a handful of capitalists and land
owners. These three plagues were the land laws
since Henry VIII. and Charles II. ; the relations of
capital and labour during the last hundred years
of selfish political economy ; and the drink trade,
fostered by capitalists and favoured by Govern
ment for the sake of revenue.

Having once set his hand to the redress of

INTERNATIONAL PRISON CONGRESS 73

social evils, he was to know little more rest.
Work was soon crowding upon him. All were
eager to enlist his sympathy and support; nor was
any question dealing with a wrong to be set right,
an injury to be repaired, an evil to be denounced
or combated, beyond the sphere of his labours.
Not to mention his great Temperance work, to
which a separate chapter will be devoted, it is
difficult to understand, bearing in mind the duties
appertaining to his ecclesiastical position, how any
one man can have combined avocations so many
and various. Whether by means of his pen, or
personally, he was ever in the field ; and in order
to form a conception of the manifold nature of his
toil and the inclusiveness of his interests, it may
be well, though out of chronological order, to
enumerate some of his appearances on public
platforms or intercourse with public bodies.

During the year 1872, acting as president at the
International Prison Congress, he struck the key
note of the line he had marked out for himself on
these occasions, by making an open avowal of his
deliberate intention of working in conjunction
with men of opinions differing from his own, and
of performing such duties as the present one as
neutrally as possible. ' Holding a profound con
viction that on all those occasions which laid on

74 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

my conscience a public duty, I am bound to be as
outspoken — I may say as explicit and determined
— in expressing what I believe as my office
requires ; so on all other occasions, when I am not
bound to make these declarations or to bear these
testimonies, I desire to identify myself with the
majority of those I love and respect. But outside
the circle and the pale of that one subject, I know
of no other relating to our political, our social, our
industrial welfare, in which it is not in my power
to work with the same energy, and the same entire
devotion of heart and feeling, as any other man in
England.'

After that fashion he worked until the end of his
life. Following upon the Prison Congress came
the meeting of the Agricultural Labourers' Union.
In 1874 he occupied the chair at a meeting of the
Society of Arts ; and received in 1881 a deputation
of agricultural labourers who, waiting upon him
with reference to the Irish Land Bill, obtained his
sanction to the Land League, 'so long as it
operated within the limits of the law, human and
divine.' At the celebration, at the Guildhall in
August 1884, of the Jubilee of the British and
Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, he was one of the
speakers, denouncing in impassioned language
the horrors still taking place, and pointing out the

MANIFOLD LABOURS 75

obligations binding England, above every other
nation, to give freedom to all men. During the
same year he was working on the Royal Com
mission for securing the better housing of the
poor. More regular in his attendance at the
meetings of the Commission than any others, with
few exceptions, of its members, he joined in
drawing up the Report embodying the results of
its labours in 1885 ; delivering in addition an
address at the Mansion House on the ' intolerable
evil ' in question, and the obstacles to be overcome
before it could be removed.

In May 1886, he took part in meetings, both of
the National Association for Promoting State-
directed Colonisation, and of the Shop Hours
League and Trades Parliamentary Association.
The shortening of hours of labour had long been
a subject of interest to him, 'having no desire
nearer to my heart than to see your lot, which is
heavy indeed, lightened and brightened by any
effort which can be made.'

No question, in fact, relating to the welfare of
the poor, men, women, and children, found him
indifferent. He had time and leisure for each.
Not a class or section of the people were out of
the range of his sympathies, or denied a right to
count upon his help. As the years went by, the

76 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

numbers of those who made good their claim to
it was ever on the increase. In 1875 the highest
ecclesiastical dignity had been conferred upon him,
and he was earning the name of the people's
Cardinal.

CHAPTER V

Elevation to the Cardinalate — Manning's Position in Eng
land — Poverty of the Church — his Financial Position.

IT was when he had been labouring at West
minster for close upon ten years that the highest
distinction, save one, that the Church has to
give was bestowed upon Archbishop Manning.
On March 6, 1875, n^s elevation to the Cardinalate
was announced. Surprise had been felt in some
quarters that the step had been so long delayed,
and the news was received with a general satis
faction marking the position he had achieved in
the esteem of his countrymen. The temper of
England had changed since the days — not so long
ago — when a tempest of indignation had swept
over it at the time of the 'papal aggression.'
Public opinion had indeed shifted with curious
rapidity ; and the toleration won by the chief
representative of a hierarchy whose establishment
had given so much offence was exemplified to a
singular degree by the precedence accorded to the
Archbishop of Westminster at the Union Jubilee
at Oxford in 1873, when the place assigned to

77

78 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

him, below the Primate and the Chancellor of
the University, was above all the other guests,
including the Bishop of Oxford. Anger and fear
alike had passed away ; partly no doubt owing to
the calming action of time, partly to the tact and
skill of the pilot who steered the vessel. Where
soever it had been possible, he had sedulously
avoided friction between the body he represented
and the mass of the nation. Wherever it was
possible he was ready to recognise the justice
accorded to his flock, as well as to vindicate their
right to trust and confidence. In small things,
no less than in great, his anxiety in these respects
was apparent, whether shown in a public acknow
ledgment of the fairness displayed in the treatment
of Roman Catholic prisoners and pauper children ;
or by a warning to the congregation assembled
for the opening of a church at Canterbury to
refrain, in visiting the Cathedral, from anything
wounding to the susceptibilities of its present
possessors. The course he pursued when made the
object of an attack on the part of Mr. Newdegate,
is an instance of his determination to leave un-
refuted no assertion calculated to injure him in
the eyes of the public. It might appear that the
accusation — that of a quasi beatification of Guy
Fawkes and his friends — would have been safely

CONGRATULATIONS 79

left unanswered. But it may be that, in consider
ing it worth while to publish, through his solicitors,
a formal repudiation of the charge, the Archbishop
gauged more correctly the degree of credulity
inherent in Englishmen.

The result of his line of conduct was now
apparent ; and Sir George Jessel, Master of the
Rolls, expressed a wide-spread sentiment when,
congratulating him upon his new dignity, he added
his conviction that few Englishmen, whatever might
be their religious opinions, would not look upon
his elevation to the Cardinalate in the light of a
high compliment to their country. From the tone
of the press it is plain that men were watching with
a kindly interest what was termed by the Times
the great experiment inaugurated by the appoint
ment of — in a certain sense — the first English
Cardinal since Reformation days — the first that is
who, of English blood and English tradition, would
be surrounded by Englishmen and would have to
fight his battles on English principles and with
English means and ways.

In similar language, and using slightly equi
vocal terms of praise, the Spectator expressed
satisfaction at the honour conferred upon a man
who, pre-eminently English, was proud of his
nationality. Though Wiseman had striven to act

8o THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

and speak as belonging to the nation, the writer
added that he had never succeeded in wholly divest
ing himself of a foreign character. With his suc
cessor it was a different matter. An Englishman
amongst Englishmen, he was at home. As a con
vert from the National Church it might have been
expected that, holding extreme views on theo
logical questions, he would have rendered the body
he had joined unpopular. But such anticipations
had been falsified. * We pay a high compliment to
his tact when we say, in no offensive spirit, that
he knows how to come round his countrymen.'

Such was the position he had won in the eyes
of the indifferent public after ten years of promi
nence, during which he had often been called
upon to act as the representative of principles
antagonistic to those of the great majority
of Englishmen. To himself, apart from the
gratified ambition persistently ascribed to him,
his promotion must have been welcome, alike as
a mark of personal affection from a friend, of
recognition of loyal service from a master, and as
enhancing and widening his opportunities. It
was a token of approbation from headquarters
none could gainsay, lending additional weight to
his power and influence.

He had started for Rome before the news was

THE CARDINALATE 81

made public, and it was at the English college
that the tidings were formally communicated to
him ; when the words he spoke in response were
eminently characteristic. The honour being be
stowed upon him at what he considered a time of
danger to the church, he felt himself, he said, told
off in the eyes of the world on a forlorn hope, but
it was a forlorn hope certain of victory. In this
sanguine spirit lay one of his chief sources of
strength. It was true that, so far as the question
of the day — that of the Temporal Power — was
concerned, his expectation of victory was to
prove fallacious ; but, defeated on one part of
the battlefield, he only transferred his flag to
another, never doubting that ultimate defeat, to
the man whose enemies were the enemies of the
Almighty God, was impossible.

He did not linger long in Rome. The necessary
ceremonies over, he returned to England invested
with his new dignity, and by April had taken up
anew his life's work at Westminster.

Whilst the distinction conferred upon him had
undeniable advantages, it is not impossible that it
brought with it certain cares and anxieties, in the
increase of expenditure necessary to maintain the
position of a Prince of the Church. He was not a
rich man, and his slender income had been already

82 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

reduced by the demands upon it. Nor would he
have had it otherwise. His glory, he once said,
was to live for the poor, to labour for the poor,
to die for the poor, and to be buried with the poor.
For riches he had no desire and no use. His habits
were simple to frugality, and he had few wants.
What was less common than personal indifference
to material prosperity, was his recognition of the
advantages to his Church of poverty. For her,
no more than for himself, did he covet wealth.
Poverty was, in his eyes, a security for her
energy and purity, and he openly rejoiced that,
in the richest of all nations, the Catholic Church
was poor. Unestablished, disendowed, she was
the more free to do her work. ' My Church and
I/ he once told Monseigneur Darboy, * date, thank
God, from the ages of Christianity when the Church
was poor but free/ In a speech delivered at Bir
mingham he had again made his boast of her
position, unfriended and independent. She came
in this land, he said, not in union with royalty, not
by statute of Parliament, not by favour of aristo
cracy ; but in poverty was united to the people
— the church of the poor all the world over. He
was ever a consistent advocate of the disestab
lishment of the Church in France, in order that
she might thus regain liberty and independence.

FINANCIAL POSITION 83

' Go/ he told French priests who visited him,
* go, ask for freedom to share the lot of the people ;
eat their bread, touch their heart, and conquer
their souls for God.'

To be poor is one thing. To be harassed by
the difficulty of meeting inevitable expenses is
another. But any anxiety the new Cardinal may
have felt with regard to the costs involved in his
elevation was promptly removed by the spontaneous
liberality of the richer members of his flock. It
was known that the allowance of £4.00 a year
made by the Vatican to Cardinal Wiseman, in
order that he might be enabled to maintain the
dignity of his office, had been an exceptional grant
and would not be renewed. Under these circum
stances a private subscription was set on foot, with
the result that a sum of between six and seven
thousand pounds was presented to the new
Cardinal. The letter, addressed to the Duke of
Norfolk, in which he acknowledged the gift,
may in part be given here, as setting forth the
financial position of a man who in spite of the
office he filled, or rather by reason of it, had
only been saved by private generosity from
something approaching to pecuniary embarrass
ment.

Expressing his grateful appreciation of the

84 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

fashion in which the gift had been made, without
any appeal to the general public or noising abroad
of the matter, he proceeded to make a statement
upon questions of money. ' Some two or three
years ago, in a circular letter, I told you that I
have no shame in begging for the spiritual need of
the diocese, or for the Cathedral, but that I could
not beg for anything which seemed to confer a
personal benefit on myself. I hope there was no
pride in this ; if there be, I hope it may be for
given. But in the work of true friendship which
you have now fulfilled towards me, I say at once
that anything beyond a private communication,
eliciting with equal privacy an unconstrained
spontaneous offering of free will, would have
caused me great regret.' That he would have
been relieved of the heavy expenses attending his
elevation he had not doubted, since it had been
done before in similar cases ; but that help would
be afforded towards his increased charges in the
future had never entered his thoughts. And in
recognition of the consideration and kindness
shown him, he went on to explain the difficulties
attending the financial position of the Archbishop
of Westminster, hitherto known to few persons.

On his being made Archbishop, not only had
the provision granted to his predecessor from

FINANCIAL POSITION 85

Rome ceased, but 'the mensal fund' had been
divided with the diocese of Southwark. Had
he not, therefore, possessed a very narrow income
of his own, there would have been a yearly
deficit of some hundreds. 'With the little I
possessed, the See has never failed, year by year,
to meet its expenses. But without my private
means — and they have yearly become less in the
work of the diocese, to which they will be
altogether left — the income of the See would not
have sufficed.' For the first time it was now
enabled to meet its inevitable costs.

Such was the explanation he furnished to the
men whose liberality had drawn it forth. So long
as the need had pressed upon him, he had borne
the burden in silence. Only when it had been
removed did he speak. But in spite of the
generosity of the Duke and his friends, the poor
man's Cardinal was and remained poor ; and this
fact should be borne in mind. It is easy to
exaggerate both the advantages and the dis
advantages of material prosperity. It is also easy
to judge harshly and unjustly of those who may
be using the very position due to wealth as means
to an end. Nevertheless it is hard to deny, that,
save in exceptional cases, wealth has a tendency to
interpose a barrier, not only between ease and want,

86 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

but between the rich and the comparatively poor.
Each grade of society has its language, its customs
and its habits, and in each a stranger, whether
coming from above or below, remains a stranger,
liable to be treated with a certain reserve. The
consciousness, penetrating to the minds of the
struggling poor around him, that the Cardinal
Archbishop, Prince of the Church though he was,
was living in careful economy, spending nothing
that could be spared upon himself, nothing upon
private gratification, may have been in part the
cause of the ascendancy he maintained both over
their hearts and their imagination. For this
reason it has seemed worth while to enter at some
length into the financial question. A passage in an
autobiographical note six years later may close
the subject. 'God knows,' he wrote in 1881,
' what little patrimony I had has long ago been
laid up in His hands ; and that if I die, as I hope,
without debts, I shall die without a shilling.'

CHAPTER VI

Temperance Work— the United Kingdom Alliance-
Gradual Development of Cardinal Manning's Views —
Total Abstinence.

OF the purely philanthropic work done by Cardinal
Manning, that connected with temperance was
unquestionably the most important ; and he him
self has left it upon record that nothing in his
public life had given him greater satisfaction.
During the years whilst, before his consecration,
he had laboured amongst the London poor, he
had seen enough of their condition to render him
acutely and painfully conscious of the urgent
necessity of employing every available method of
combating what he regarded as pre-eminently the
cause of wickedness and misery amongst them ;
but it was, according to his own statement,
through the United Kingdom Alliance that he
became for the first time fully aroused to the
greatness and extent of the evil. Speaking in the
year 1882, he said that he had to thank that body
for having drawn his attention to the subject some
fifteen years earlier, ' when, after a long life already

87

88 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

spent, believing myself to know the condition of
the people, as I have no doubt a multitude of
good men do believe at this moment that they
thoroughly know what is the state and danger of
our population, I for the first time came to a
knowledge of the real condition of the people, and the
real demoralising power of this great drink traffic.
I came to this knowledge through a deputation of
good men — members of the United Kingdom
Alliance — who wrote to me, and requested an
interview. They came to my house, and the
arguments they laid before me aroused my
attention, and from that day I trace the whole
knowledge that I possess, and I may say an
intense feeling of indignation, and the resolution,
as long as life lasts, never to stint or spare in word
or deed to help the United Kingdom Alliance.'

Knowledge first ; indignation next ; lastly,
unwearied work and co-operation. This was the
result of that memorable interview. Yet, a year
before it had taken place, the Archbishop had
appointed a committee to enquire into the subject
of drink, and to consider the means to be employed
to meet the evil. A report had followed recom
mending the formation of a society ; but a society
of which one rule alone out of six dealt with total
abstinence, and then only to apply the remedy to

EARLY TEMPERANCE WORK 89

persons habitually under the influence of intoxi
cating liquor.

The following year, and shortly before the
interview with the deputation, a further step was
taken, affording evidence that, if his knowledge
was still incomplete, it was sufficient to forbid the
Archbishop to remain inactive. His present
measure was the issue of a pastoral containing a
pledge binding whosoever signed it to refrain, for
the space of one year, from entering a public
house on Saturday nights or Sundays. Next
came the deputation from the United Kingdom
Alliance, headed by Dr. Dawson Burns, its
Metropolitan Superintendent, who, in giving an
account of the interview, testified to the anxiety
displayed by the Archbishop to listen and learn.
The claims of the great temperance organisation
were pressed upon him, the Archbishop replying
with a frank recognition of the importance of the
movement represented by his visitors, and
admitting the services he would personally be
enabled to render to his own poor, could he see
his way to join it. At present, however, this was
not the case. He was not strong ; his doctor
insisted upon his taking a small quantity of wine ;
and he added — what many honest advocates of
temperance are loath to allow — that he did not

90 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

feel justified in publicly advocating total abstin
ence to his very poor people, who had so many
hardships to undergo, whilst forced to confess at
the same time that wine was a necessity to
himself.

What he could do he was prepared to do ; and
in the following October he attended a meeting
of the Alliance in Manchester, and there delivered
a speech denoting his zeal in the cause of temper
ance, being nevertheless careful to commit himself
to no doctrine on the subject going beyond the
convictions he held at that time. That the liquor
traffic was an abominable evil was certain ; the
Alliance was promoting a measure he was able
cordially to support, and he went to Manchester
to say so. Further in the direction of total
abstinence, he neither went nor professed to go,
and his progress continued to be slow and cautious.

In 1868 he again received a visit from Dr.
Dawson Burns, accompanied on this occasion by
an American Temperance Reformer, Mr. Edward
Delavan by name, who made an attempt to induce
him to admit that the evil was inherent in the
drink itself. It was unsuccessful. That doctrine,
the Archbishop replied, had been condemned by the
Church. It was the doctrine of the Manichaeans ;
nor was he convinced by Dr. Dawson Burns, who

TEMPERANCE PASTORAL 91

eagerly interposed, to point out that his friend's
argument had been misunderstood, and that no
such doctrine was implied. The Archbishop
smiled. 'You were very quiet,' he said, 'and I
suspect quiet people.'

Though for some three or four years longer
he maintained the same attitude of dissent from
the extremists of the temperance advocates, a
Pastoral belonging to the year 1871 contained the
deliberate and emphatic expression of his estimate
of the evil at work ; not only in its more palpable
forms, but especially in the effect produced by
habitual excess in the matter of drink upon the
educated and wealthy classes. Excess in wine,
he pointed out, was a thing distinct from drunken
ness, and was indulged in by many persons
guiltless of the last, and never suspected of it It
was a secret pestilence. Addressing himself, ' not
to the poor, and the rude, and the turbulent, whose
riot is in the streets, but to the rich and the refined
and the educated . . . sheltered by the high
civilisation of our social life from all grossness,
and who would choose rather to die than to be
marked by an act of excess, or even suspected of
it,' he boldly made his charge against them in this
matter. If excess in drink, tolerable in none,
could be tolerated in any, it might be borne with

92 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

in the labouring poor, exhausted by toil and taken
unawares in the thousand temptations which
surround them. In others it was intolerable.

The Pastoral was a prelude of what was to
come. The Archbishop was soon to take a
further step, and one determining the lines upon
which his crusade against intemperance was
carried on until the end of his life. Early in
1872 Dr. Dawson Burns received a letter, request
ing him to pay a visit to Archbishop's House.

' I want to tell you something/ the Archbishop
wrote, ' that I am sure will please you.'

What that was Dr. Dawson Burns, on obeying
the summons, learnt.

' I want to tell you what I have done/ said the
Archbishop ; ' I have signed the pledge. I have
found it necessary to take a step in advance. I
have been asked to speak on this subject by some
of our people who are employed in a factory at
Southwark, and I cannot go to them and tell
them to do anything but to give up the drink.
It is the only thing that will do them any good.
But I cannot tell them to do that if I have not
done it myself, and so I have signed the pledge.'

Thus he entered, fully and whole-heartedly,
upon the work he never abandoned so long as
life lasted, and upon a field in which some of his

TOTAL ABSTINENCE 93

greatest victories were won. In the May of that
same year he made public confession of his con
victions as to the effect of alcohol upon the will,
gave an account of the gradual process by which
he had arrived at his conclusions upon the subject,
and at his ultimate realisation that strong drink
was opposed to the development of man's best
nature and faculties. From that time onwards he
was the eager co-operator with all engaged in
temperance work. ' He was large-minded on the
one side, in regard to this work, and large-hearted
on the other. He took in the whole needs of the
case, if temperance were to triumph, and did not
allow his views to be contracted or his sympathies
to be narrowed by other considerations.' ' His
public advocacy' — such is the testimony of the
writer of a leading article in the Alliance News^
when death had at last deprived the cause of one
of its chief promoters — * his public advocacy was
an immense advantage to the cause, but perhaps
still more valuable was the weight of his private
influence, and the aid of his wise counsels in
seasons of emergency.'

His help was never lacking whenever it
could be of assistance. At Exeter Hall he
addressed meetings again and again, was fore
most in opposition to the Compensation clauses,

94 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

and frequently expressed his convictions by
means of articles in the magazines and reviews.
At a meeting connected with the Temperance
Hospital, he took the opportunity of deprecating
the use of alcohol as a medicine if it could be
dispensed with, adding that he had come to the
conclusion that it could. In this last respect,
his convictions only strengthened with years.
A conspiracy, he once told his audience at
a temperance meeting, had been formed against
him. When he was lying ill at Paris, a rumour
had gained currency that he had been ordered
to drink wine and had obeyed. Even the
League of the Cross had been deluded by the
report. Let its members never believe any
thing of the kind again. In his last illness his
firmness in refusing stimulants was said to have
interposed difficulties in the way of his treat
ment.

He brought to the service of the cause he had
embraced an enthusiasm stigmatised by opponents
as that of a fanatic. ' Had I not taken the vow of
abstinence,' he is quoted as saying, ' I should not
dare to present myself before my Maker ; ' and
presiding over a meeting held for the purpose of
forming a new association, he recalled the fact
that the last act of Father Mathew was to receive

TEMPERANCE CRUSADE 95

the pledge from those who stood round his death
bed. ' I desire no better end for my reverend
brethren around me/ added the Cardinal — cno
better end for myself.'

Reports of his doings reached Rome, and an
explanation was demanded. It took the form of
a report on drunkenness, horrifying to those not
acquainted with the condition of the London
poor. ' In the Lord's name, go on/ came the
reply from the Vatican.

Enthusiasm begets enthusiasm. To call in
cold blood upon men to relinquish in cold blood
what has been to many of them a chief source of
enjoyment, however debased, a solace in hardship
and suffering, would be difficult and probably in
effectual. The fervour of an apostle is needed
to create the corresponding temper of mind and
spirit in those upon whom it is brought to bear,
and to render the required sacrifice, not indeed
easy, but possible. To his mission the Archbishop
brought that fervour, the passionate zeal arising
from the conviction that upon the result of his
appeal might depend the salvation or the destruc
tion, body, soul and spirit, of the men and women
to whom it was addressed. From the day when
he set his hand to the work, he spared in it neither
physical nor mental labour ; even his autumn

96 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

' holidays ' being spent for years, and until in
creasing age made it impossible, in carrying the
war against drink into its northern strongholds,
where he went from town to town preaching the
gospel of temperance.

He had, at the first, but few active or convinced
coadjutors amongst those of his own faith. Some
indeed there were who proved most zealous co-
operators in the work. But, looking back at the end
of his career and reviewing his labours, the Cardinal
has left it upon record, that for years he had stood
almost alone. One man, nevertheless, can do
much, when he is a Manning, and the great
League of the Cross was the monument of the
work accomplished.

Before arranging his methods of attacking the
gigantic evil with which he had to deal, he made
himself personally acquainted with the strength
of the enemy. Not content to receive his facts
at second hand, he visited, attended by a single
priest, the slums of Drury Lane, and learned to
measure the forces arrayed against him before
settling upon his plan of campaign. When that
plan was matured, it took the form of the founda
tion of the organisation which, under his presi
dency, proved so astonishing a success.

Started in the course of the same year — 1872 —

THE LEAGUE OF THE CROSS 97

in which he had formally accepted the principle
of total abstinence as a working basis, the
League of the Cross began in a meeting in the
schoolroom of the Italian church, Hatton Gar
dens, where the priests had long been labouring
to carry on the work inaugurated by Father
Mathew.

Looking upon the crowded audience, collected
from all parts of London, 'Who is there here,'
asked the Archbishop, ' that took the pledge from
Father Mathew ? ' then, as some seventeen hands
were held up, 'tell me/ he enquired, 'what we
can do to restore his work amongst us ? '

' Call upon the clergy to take the lead/ was the
answer, ' and to guide us.'

' I will call upon no man/ replied the Arch
bishop, 'to do what I am not prepared to do
myself; and I, as it is my duty as your pastor
and your Bishop, will be your leader.'

' I hope/ he said four years later, giving, at a
meeting in Exeter Hall, an account of the origin
of the League of the Cross, ' I hope I have kept
my word, and God helping me, it shall not be
broken.'

Nor was it. The work then started was
never discontinued so long as the Archbishop
drew breath. The eye of the master was always

98 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

upon it, his personal care fostering it. It was set
on foot at once ; a meeting in October of this
same year on Clerkenwell Green being already the
fifth of a series ; when, standing in the rain amidst
a crowd numbering some four or five thousand, he
enrolled hundreds of new recruits in the League
as they knelt before him. Temperance work
was never permitted to be crowded out by
other interests, however engrossing. From Rome,
whither he had gone to be admitted into the sacred
College, he wrote expressing his disappointment
at his enforced absence from the meeting of the
League to be held in Exeter Hall on St. Patrick's
Day, and sending his blessing, with messages of
admonition and encouragement, to its members.
Again, after an absence from England extending
over nearly six months, when, in 1878, he
had been detained in Rome by the illness and
death of Pope Pius IX., he is found, less than a
fortnight after his return, at St. Anne's, Spital-
fields, enrolling in the League of the Cross five
hundred working boys, girls, and children. Even
in the description of the scene supplied by
the Times, the note of emotion is curiously felt —
the Cardinal ' deeply affected/ the children proud
and happy, offering their special thanks, in an
address of welcome, that to them his first visit on

THE LEAGUE OF THE CROSS 99

his return to England had been paid ; and the
Cardinal in his reply telling his hearers that he
would prize their address as far dearer and more
pleasing than any congratulations he had ever
received.

So he laboured. And his labour was not fruit
less. Summarising, in later years, the progress
made, he was able to state that thirty branches of
the League then existed in London, besides nearly
twenty elsewhere, and that its four yearly festivals
had been like the four solemnities of the church.

No thought, no care, no toil, had been spared
to ensure the success of the new organisation.
In its arrangements the founder showed the eye
of an artist for effect, combined with the percep
tion of a man of the world and a student of
human nature of the uses to which outward
display can be put. More important still was his
power of adapting his language to his audience
and of touching their hearts. On August 24th,
1874, was held the first of the great demonstra
tions of the League which, becoming one of
its distinguishing features, were so effectual in
impressing the imagination of men, and in
rendering them proud of the body they had
joined. In the opera theatre of the Crystal
Palace, the Archbishop addressed a meeting,

ioo THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

afterwards speaking to the crowds in the gardens
without. As he talked of the curses attendant
upon drink, of homes desolated and of wrecked
lives, the contagion of his enthusiasm and of his
pity infected the listening multitudes, and men
sobbed in response. It is easy to scoff at such
scenes, easy to hold up to scorn the emotionalism
displayed. In taking account of the practical
effect of the sober and strenuous labour of which
they were no more than the occasional effer
vescence, the outcome and accompaniment, it is
not so easy to deny that emotionalism, the result
of an appeal to the imagination and to the heart,
has its legitimate use in investing with its glamour
the hard and steep path of sacrifice and renuncia
tion.

The League was intended to act as a preventive,
as well as a curative, organisation. Thousands
of children were enrolled in it, nor was it limited
to those amongst their elders who might be said
to stand in serious need of acquiring habits of
temperance. ' Don't say that,' the Cardinal
would plead when it was called a confraternity
of penitent drunkards, ' I am its president and its
chaplain.' l

And under its president and chaplain it grew

1{ Cardinal Manning.' A. W. Hutton, p. 163.

THE LEAGUE OF THE CROSS 101

and prospered. In its formation and arrange
ment the Archbishop was not above learning a
lesson from bodies from which, in some respects,
he dissented ; and in the methods of the Salvation
Army he discerned, as will be seen hereafter, a
genuine and powerful method of grappling with
evil and of marshalling the forces arrayed against
it. The work of the Army, he once wrote, was
too real to be any longer disregarded and ascribed
to the devil ; and in the organisation of the League
of the Cross he borrowed from the system proved
so efficacious by General Booth. The new Society
possessed officers of its own, military titles and
badges ; and presently a bodyguard was formed,
originating in the need of preventing undue
pressure on the part of the throngs accustomed
to crowd round the president. Proud to be
designated the Cardinal's Guard, these men were
distinguished from the rest of the members of the
League by coloured sashes, and played a foremost
part in the great yearly demonstrations. Year
by year, the vast procession had its march past,
watched by their chief, as with beating of drums
they defiled before him ; and year by year the
increasing numbers taking part in the show testi
fied to the success of his work. The fame of it
spread ; it became a phenomenon to be taken

102 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

into account ; and to the effect of the machinery
he had set in motion upon a class — the London
Irish — standing in special need of it, the secular
press bore witness :

'The cause of abstinence,' said the Standard,
1 has never found a more able advocate.'

Some lookers on, it is true, added a sneer to
their recognition of the work done. It appeared
to these commentators impossible to believe a
Roman Catholic ecclesiastic to be moved by a
pure desire to redeem the people committed to
his care, and others, from the tyranny of drink, and
to turn them into self-respecting members of
society. Discerning in his unwearied labours
for this ostensible object an ulterior motive, the
Cardinal's power over the masses was strangely
ascribed at a later date, by one newspaper, to
his advocacy of temperance; and it was implied
that he had made use of the engine of total
abstinence as a means of gaining proselytes. He
knew drink to be a destructive vice, temperance
to be a virtue ; was aware that abstainers were
increasing in number, and that religion would
reap the benefit. Of course, the writer went on
to say with a show of impartiality, some might
rail at all this and object to such a line of conduct,
but they were men who knew little of the masses

THE LEAGUE OF THE CROSS 103

and were ignorant of what must be done to win
them. They might accuse [sic] the Cardinal who, to
serve his flock and his church, deprived himself of
enjoyment and rest, so long as he might bring
over the former to his way of thinking. * But
while they are laughing he is working, and with
what success let any one who knows London and
its people well attempt to estimate.'

The passage, with its covert insinuation of
double dealing, is worth quoting as an instance
of the attitude of some who looked on at the
movement. The generous tribute of the United
Kingdom Alliance and of its chief, Dr. Dawson
Burns, may be allowed to dispose of the charge
that the Cardinal had thrown himself into the
cause of temperance as an underhand method of
proselytism.

The distrust of such men was of little account.
More serious was the fact that the course he pur
sued was strongly disliked by not a few amongst
his own brethren. In the summer of I884,1 their
disapproval found vent in a series of letters
which, printed in the Tablet, were marked by
unusual violence on the part of those opposed to
the Cardinal's advocacy of total abstinence, one of
the writers in particular rejoicing that public

1 Not in 1888, as stated by Mr. Purcell.

104 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

expression had at last been given to the reflections
and conversations of thousands of Catholics against
the uncatholic speeches and sentiments of fanatical
teetotallers, and that the 'almost universal pro
tests' had found voice. For several weeks the
attack was carried on with vigour, though not
without reply on the part of the minority enlisted
on their Archbishop's side — the last letter printed
before the correspondence was closed containing
a singular suggestion, which might almost have
been imagined to be the adroit device adopted by
a partisan to discredit his opponents. Why, asked
the writer, should the pledge not be taken as
against beer and spirits, but not against wine, thus
enabling those to whom it was administered to
drink a little of the latter for their health's sake,
whilst they would still perform an act of mortifica
tion, and give an example which would bring them
the blessing of God? In other and plainer
language, why should not the poor be induced to
abandon their luxuries, whilst the rich would
remain in undisturbed possession of their own ?

Very human in his susceptibilities, the Cardinal
keenly resented the aspersions made upon him,
not only by irresponsible writers but — under a
pseudonym — by the Bishop of Nottingham. Dis
approval, however, from the one quarter or the

DISSENSIONS 105

other, did no more than strengthen him in the
position he had taken up.

'If we were ever on God's side in a battle/ he
wrote to a priest who was a fellow-worker in
the cause of temperance, and had thrown himself
into the fray in the defence of his Archbishop, ' it
is now, when we are using, z>., giving up, our
Christian liberty for the salvation of souls. If
others think to save more souls by using their
liberty to drink wine, let us wait for the Last Day.
I have borne years of reproval and shame in this
matter, and I often say, "I am a fool for Christ's
sake "... And now, do not fear. When I began,
only two priests in London helped me. Now
there are about forty . . . and almost all are
doing something. Everything is going onward.
God forbid that we, Catholic priests, should be
left behind in self-denial for the love of souls by
those who are not in the unity of the Truth.'

From the educated laity it appears that the
Cardinal received scanty sympathy or help. 'I
have piped to them and they have not danced,'
he once complained, ' there is not one gentleman
who will give up one glass of sherry to help me in
the battle.'

Besides the exception often taken to the funda
mental principle on which the work was based,

io6 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

minor points of difference were the cause of friction
in the management of the movement. Objections
were made, as years went on, to the Cardinal's
treatment of the men who went by the name of
his bodyguard, and were, in some sort, charged
with the supervision of the temperance work in
the various districts of the diocese. His special
delegates, they attended weekly at Westminster
to make a personal report of their progress ;
and it was rumoured that not only were they
admitted to terms of overmuch equality with
their chief, but that — presuming on his favour —
they had been known to treat the priests of the
missions in which their work lay with small
respect.

Whether these charges were justified or not,
dissension was probably unavoidable between the
Cardinal's deputies, imbued with his principles
and fired by his enthusiasm, and priests out of
sympathy with the total abstinence movement,
to whom they probably appeared in the light of
unwelcome intruders. It was also natural that
the intimacy existing between the Cardinal demo
crat and the men of all classes to whom he was
bound by the tie of a common interest, should be
disliked by others.

To reports furnished by these officers of the

DISSENSIONS 107

League, exaggerating or misrepresenting the
sentiments of the priests with whom they came
into collision, Cardinal Manning's biographer
attributes the note, dated 1890, which he prints.
It is fair to take the possibility he suggests into
account ; but the statements then made by the
Cardinal must nevertheless be regarded as his
final and deliberate judgments. The question
whether or not they were justified would be best
tested by an examination and comparison of the
present condition and efficiency of the League of
the Cross, or of any like temperance organisation,
with the period during which it enjoyed the super
vision, direction, and support of its founder.

* In the total abstinence movement/ he wrote,
' the aspiration of our people has been higher than
that of the clergy. The chief discouragement has
come from priests ... I have deliberately made
myself " a fool for Christ's sake " in this matter, and
set my face as a flint. When I thought in Paris
that I might never come back in 1877, one of my
happiest thoughts was that " we had saved many
poor drunkards." I hope whoever comes after
me will have the courage to face the criticism and
the ridicule of not the fools only, but the half
hearted wise. Our poor men are an example
and a rebuke to us. They founded and have

io8 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

maintained the League of the Cross: we have
only led it.'

For the rest, in this final note in reference to
the League, a denial to the charges of his
biographer as to his method of dealing with his
subordinates, clerical and lay, seems to be given.
Noting with thankfulness the increase in the
number of priests who co-operated in the work of
temperance — those attending at the yearly demon
strations amounting to about eighty — the Cardinal
explicitly declared that, though the League of the
Cross had created a sort of vigilance society, it
found fault with nobody, and that though total
abstainers, even amongst the priests who occu
pied the position of presidents, were in a minority,
the men made no criticism. Were a priest known
to be intemperate they would do so ; but they
did not complain if he were not a total abstainer.

With pardonable pride the Cardinal went on to
describe the strength of the organisation — its
London branches, numbering over forty, his 1,400
Guards and hundreds of boy Guards. 'The
League/ he concluded, 'has taken hold of the
people, especially the working men. It was this
that gave me a hold in the Strike of last year, not
only of my own men but also of the Englishmen,
who were as two to one. I pray God that my sue-

HOPES FOR THE FUTURE 109

cessor will humbly and with his whole heart go into
the midst of the people as I have tried to do, and
will give to the League of the Cross a warm and
encouraging countenance.'

The work done by the League amongst the
young was to him a special cause of encourage
ment. The old would go, but the new generation
was furnishing recruits to fill the gaps; and he
had the rash faith in the permanence of his work
perhaps necessary to sustain effort and enthusiasm.

'When I was ill,' he once said, after sickness
had temporarily withdrawn him from his labours,
' 1 heard that somebody had said " When he is gone,
the League of the Cross will go." I said to
myself, " No, the League of the Cross will not go.
. . . Whatever will become of me, the League of
the Cross will not die." '

The words, with their ring of happy confidence,
are not without a pathetic significance. Yet,
perhaps more than by any of his other work, he
had proved by his labours in the cause of temper
ance, what one man can do for a generation.

CHAPTER VII

Consistency — Manning and the Temporal Power — Early
Views — Change of Opinion — Regret at the Policy of
the Vatican.

THERE are men who are called consistent. They
form their opinions upon a subject, or a set of
subjects, with consideration and care or without
it ; and thenceforward resolutely refuse — not in
frequently as if refusal was a virtue — to allow them
to be modified, either by outward changes or by
inward growth. It does not occur to such persons
to re-consider their views in the light of increased
experience. Their method has its advantages.
It not only safeguards the man who pursues it
from the charge of fickleness or caprice, but im
parts a certain spurious strength to conviction,
rendering it, as Hazlitt confessed of some of his own
conclusions, ' as incorrigible to proof as need be.'

Others are not satisfied with this method of
proceeding, and keep an open mind until the end.
The final stage of their development is never
reached until death puts the coping stone to the

edifice of their faith ; they are prepared at all
no

THE TEMPORAL POWER in

times to admit new factors into their outlook on
life and on the conduct of life ; and to allow that
former opinions, even if not altogether unfounded,
have been rendered unworkable by the course of
events. They refuse to be fettered by their own
past. ' If I utter no word that I should like to
unsay/ wrote St. Augustine, * I am nearer being a
fool than a wise man.'

Cardinal Manning belonged to this last class.
He was ready throughout to adapt his methods to
his enlarged experience and widened knowledge.
If consistency was a virtue, he held that it was
also capable of becoming 'a vice and a disease.'
He had not shrunk, in theological matters, from
cutting himself adrift from his ancient moorings,
and in the secular sphere he acted in a like spirit.

On two subjects in particular his opinions under
went, as years passed by, a marked and notable
change. These were the subjects of the Temporal
Power of the Pope and Irish affairs.

Into the first, mainly connected with his ecclesi
astical position, it is not necessary here to enter at
length. But the alteration effected in his attitude
with regard to a question upon which he had felt
so strongly ; the reasons for the change, and his
fearless candour in avowing it, are too character
istic of the man, too closely connected with his

H2 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

democratic sympathies and his methods, to be
altogether omitted from the present study.

The vehemence and passion with which the
cause of the Temporal Power was taken up by
many of its defenders may be difficult of compre
hension to those to whom it may seem to lie alto
gether outside the inner circle occupied by questions
of vital importance to the Catholic Church. But
it must be remembered that it is at all times hard
to gauge or limit enthusiasm for what wears
the guise of a principle ; and that principle was
in this case represented by a spiritual sovereign
commanding the devoted loyalty of those who
owed him allegiance. Moreover, the instinct — a
healthy one on the whole — bidding men rise up in
defence of what is assailed, is inherent in human
nature. The tragedy of many lives, it has been
pointed out, is contained in the fact that they
are doomed to be spent in combats in which defeat
is not only inevitable, but destined ultimately to
serve the very cause at issue : ' We are compelled
by our moral nature to labour and die for a pre-
doomed cause, even as our bodily nature struggles
to the bitter end against the relentless forces of
dissolution.'1 The great fire of London was the
cleansing of the city, but what should be said of

1 ' Oil and Wine.' Rev. G. Tyrrell.

THE TEMPORAL POWER 113

the man who watched the conflagration with folded
hands ? When failure follows upon effort, it is the
few alone, far-sighted, wise, and faithful, who,
having done their best to avert it, can accept the
event as the judgment of God, and leave the issue
to Him. So long as eyes are misted with passion
or sorrow, it is difficult to discern the true character
of what wears the disguise of misfortune, or to
penetrate its incognito. Such passion and sorrow
may account for the sentiments with which many
men, and Manning amongst them, regarded the
loss of the Temporal Power.

He had espoused its cause, when it was first
menaced, with so much violence as to incur censure
at Rome ; certain statements in his lectures on the
subject being considered at the least inopportune,
and the lectures themselves being strangely enough
threatened with the Index. Nor were his private
utterances less unrestrained. 'The Italians have
forced their way into Rome,' he wrote in a letter
of 1870, ' and as I believe that there is a God that
judgeth the earth, so sure I am that their doom
will not tarry.' Confident in the ultimate triumph
of the Holy See over the forces arrayed against its
temporalities, he denounced its opponents in a
fashion wholly unmodified by the fact that they

were associated with principles of nationality and

H

H4 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

liberty peculiarly calculated to make their appeal
to his personal sympathies. The letter he ad
dressed to Mr. Cardwell, on the occasion of Gari
baldi's visit to England in 1864, is couched in
terms of scornful and vehement invective illus
trative of his temper of mind at that date. Had
he been called upon in later years to express a
judgment upon the great Italian patriot it might
have remained severe, but it is difficult to believe
that his language would have been the same. On
the more abstract point at issue, his views cer
tainly underwent a marked change. Though he
continued until the end to regard the taking of
Rome as a legalised robbery, he was sagacious
enough, where the infringement of no law, moral
or divine, was involved, to adapt a policy to new
conditions ; and sufficiently open-eyed to discover,
in what he had regarded as an unmitigated evil,
compensating advantages — the advantages accru
ing to a church robbed and disinherited of being
thereby brought closer to those — also robbed, also
disinherited — whom it was her mission to draw into
the fold. Were she to be persecuted and spoiled,
he wrote in 1883, she would be but the stronger
and purer. A wealthy church would fare ill with a
Commune, and be out of sympathy with the peoples.
Time and experience had been necessary to

CHANGE OF VIEWS 115

produce this temper of mind. As the years had
gone by, and no sign was perceptible portending
the fulfilment of his anticipations that the Pope
would be re-instated in his temporal sovereignty,
the Cardinal's sanguine spirit had learnt to adjust
itself after this fashion to the circumstances, and
to find in them fresh grounds for hope. The past,
he acknowledged, could not return. Were the
Temporal Power ultimately restored, it would be
under new conditions. The old dynastic world
was moribund, a new world of the peoples was
replacing it, and the ancient European Christen
dom was widening into a Christendom embracing
east, west, and south.

Such being his later convictions, the attitude
maintained at the Vatican was matter to him of
keen regret. He was not the man to stand at the
grave of a dead past, wasting precious time in vain
laments ; and with his strong sense of the duties
of citizenship, it was natural that he should be
fully alive to the evils of a policy forbidding
Catholics to take their due share in the public life
of Italy, condemning them to an inertia only too
likely to become habitual, and virtually depriving
them of their civic and political rights. He had
seen and felt the result, in England, of the dis
abilities under which the Roman Catholic body

ii6 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

had there long laboured. To his strenuous spirit
it was grievous that the like disabilities should be
voluntarily inflicted upon the Catholics of Italy ;
and reckless of certain blame and possible mistrust,
in quarters whence he would most have valued
approval, he did not hesitate to urge upon Leo
XIII. the withdrawal of the decree of Pius IX. pro
hibiting participation in parliamentary affairs on
the part of all who bowed to his authority. Let
the Pope, he entreated, put his trust, not in kings
and states, but in the people. His counsels were
not permitted to prevail, and by the more extreme
party at the Vatican he was not unnaturally re
garded in the light of a renegade. ' They look
upon me in Rome as an Italianissimo/ he once
said. But he did not on that account abandon
his position. To restore the Temporal Power by
foreign intervention or by force of arms would be,
in his opinion, to blot out in blood the Catholic
faith in Italy. Not till God should change the
hearts and minds of the Italian people was its
restoration possible, and this miracle was not to
be expected in the present generation. Adapting
his outlook, therefore, to the exigencies of the
times, he looked to a truce between Pope and
King as the basis of future peace and prosperity.
' I am beginning,' he answered those who charged

CHANGE OF VIEWS 117

him with the abandonment of the principles of
twenty years, ' I am beginning to feel my feet in
the Italian question.'

A private correspondence belonging to the year
1889 may be accepted as supplying his final views
upon this matter. The Italian nation was, he
conceived, being lost, as the English had been lost
before them, and by the same policy — a course of
action corresponding to that of the Peculiar People,
who refused medicines. The Catholic population
of Italy, like that of England under the penal laws,
was exiled from experience, training, and education
in political and public life. In his eyes the ne
eletti ne elettori was a policy of abdication, the
rising generation being thereby kept back from all
paths of public life and service. In England the
effect of the old exclusion was still apparent, even
when all paths had been laid open ; and in Italy
the result would be similar. In a note written
about the same time he again drew a parallel from
the past. The Spanish policy, the reign of James II.,
had forfeited the heart and trust of Englishmen,
' and so I fear it will be in Italy. The abdication
of natural duty called abstention is not the mind
of the Holy See, but of him that letteth, and will
let, until he be broken out of the way. Quousque
Domine?'

ii8 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Of the unpopularity incurred at Rome by
opinions so diametrically opposed to the dominant
party there he was fully aware, but not for that
reason did he remain passive. The cause of the
Holy See was his own cause, and he could not
refrain from pressing his views when, rightly or
wrongly, he conceived that its vital interests were
at stake.

CHAPTER VIII

The Cardinal's Attitude towards the Irish Question— Letter
to Lord Grey — Gradual Development of his Opinions —
He becomes an Advocate of Home Rule — His Relations
with Irish Members — Monsignor Persico's Mission.

ON a subject nearer home than that of the rela
tions of the Holy See with the Italian Govern
ment, the Cardinal's change of view was equally
likely to make him enemies, and was avowed
with the same openness and courage. This was
upon the question of Ireland.

In the eyes of a man naturally interested in all
matters affecting the welfare of the Empire at
large, and charged besides with the care of a
large Irish population, the ever recurrent Irish
difficulty could not fail to be of the first import
ance. His position was not an easy one. Even
at a time when he was far from holding the
convictions he subsequently embraced, he had
never ranged himself upon the side of the
dominant race, supported by a large section of
English Catholics. As early as 1866, he was
mentioning in a letter to Monsignor Talbot that

119

120 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

he had been informed by Archbishop Cullen that
a chief obstacle in the way of uniting the English
and Irish bishops was the Tablet — the principal
Catholic organ — and that those it represented
were assisting in the formation of an English
party which would again divide English and Irish
Catholics, as well as English Catholics amongst
themselves. To deal with all these several parties
in a spirit of fairness ; to attempt to put an
end to racial antagonisms and class antipathies,
was one of the tasks set before the demo
cratic Archbishop ; nor was it to be performed
without wounding susceptibilities on either
side.

One of his first public steps was calculated to
alienate from him the confidence of a class he
would specially have desired to conciliate ; and
the issue of a Pastoral in condemnation of Fenian-
ism roused a storm of indignation amongst a
portion of his Irish flock. For some nights it was
thought well to invoke the protection of special
constables on behalf of churches and chapels
threatened with incendiarism, and the wave of
resentment included for a time the person of the
Archbishop. Two years later his letter to Lord
Grey made it clear that, whatever might be the
objections he entertained towards the means

LETTER TO LORD GREY 121

adopted by some Irishmen to obtain the redress
of their grievances, he was in no way to be
ranked amongst the supporters of the oppressors
of their country. In this document the opinions
he held at this stage of his career are made plain,
and it is interesting to compare them with his
matured convictions twenty-five years later.

Beginning by urging the gravity of the situa
tion which, under-rated by some politicians, was
pressed home to his own mind by direct and
intimate contact with the Irish people, he ex
pressed his persuasion that the movement then
in progress was of a deeper, more permanent
character than the risings of 1798 or 1803, and
that it was gradually changing an integral part of
the United Kingdom into a type which would not
combine with the British or consolidate the unity
of the realm. Two measures were, in his esti
mation, necessary to appease popular discontent.
Those measures were religious equality and an
equitable land law, coupled with a modification
of the tone and language commonly adopted in
England with reference to Ireland. Little stirring
was necessary to produce a flame. The accumu
lated animosity of the past was born in the blood
of Irishmen, and he confessed that his surprise
was, not that they controlled it so little, but that

122 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

they controlled it so much. Disowning on the
part of the Roman Catholic Church any desire
for State endowment, he claimed nevertheless
restitution of the property taken from it, to be
made, not to itself, but to God's representatives,
the poor ; and he demanded religious equality.

Proceeding to the land question, he did not
shrink from affirming the natural and divine law
giving each people a right to live of the fruits of
the soil in their own land. The rights of private
property were modified by public utility, and
when used to the injury of a man's neighbour
they would be resisted by law, and his freedom
would be limited. An exposition of the wrongs
of the Irish people was followed by a warning
that the threatened danger would never pass
away until justice was done. Legal right was
not always justice ; the highest legal right was
sometimes the greatest wrong. The Irish people
appealed to Parliament for redress of their griev
ances, pleading that the property in the soil
created by its tillers and tenants, though belong
ing legally to the landlord, belonged by that
moral right higher than law to those who had
created it. In conclusion, he claimed for himself
the right to speak on the subject, as one brought
daily into touch with an impoverished race, driven

LETTER TO LORD GREY 123

from home by what is called, by a heartless
eupheuism, the Land Question, and which means
in truth ' hunger, thirst, nakedness, notice to quit,
labour spent in vain, the toil of years seized upon,
the breaking up of homes ; the miseries, sicknesses,
deaths of parents, children, wives; the despair and
wildness of the poor when legal force, like a sharp
harrow, goes over the most sensitive and vital rights
of mankind.' Fenianism could not have survived
for a year if it were not supported by the tradi
tional discontent of almost a whole people.

Thus the Archbishop of Westminster concluded
his impassioned protest — the protest of a man, as
he was careful to state, who next after that which
was not of this world, desired earnestly to see
maintained the unity, solidity, and prosperity of
the Empire. From the views expressed in it he
never receded ; time and experience led him to
add to them other articles of faith which he
would doubtless at this date have repudiated.

The process was slow and gradual. In 1869,
a request from the Secretary of the Amnesty
Committee that he would permit the petition for
the pardon of the Fenian prisoners to lie for
signature at the London churches implies that,
notwithstanding his condemnation of their political
methods, he was not regarded by Irish agitators

124 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

otherwise than as a friend. In refusing what was
asked on the ground that it was an invariable
custom to exclude non-ecclesiastical or non-re
ligious matters from the churches, he expressed
his sympathy with the object of the petition, add
ing his conviction that the hope of success would
be greatly weakened by apparent identification
with his churches, and would be correspondingly
strengthened should the appeal, disengaged from
all special associations of nation and religion, be
addressed to the kindly and merciful feelings of
the country at large.

His confidence in the justice of the people was
always great — greater perhaps than is warranted
by the facts of history. In a letter to the Primate
of Ireland on the subject of education, written
five years after that addressed to Lord Grey, he
took occasion to express his sanguine anticipa
tions of amelioration in the relations between the
two countries, looking onward to a time when
national prejudice and animosities should be
healed, and to a Parliament of wider views and
in greater sympathy with the constituencies of
the three kingdoms and of peoples distinct in
blood, in religion, in character, and in local
interests. Turning to the minority responsible
in his eyes for the fostering of race hatreds, he

OPPOSED TO HOME RULE 125

denounced them strongly. ( I have watched/ he
said, ' with a mixture of sorrow and indignation
the writings and speeches of a handful of boister
ous and blustering doctrinaires, who are trying to
turn men away from doing what is just towards
Ireland by grandiloquent phrases about the im
perial race and an imperial policy. An imperial
policy, in the mouths of such men, means a
legislation which ignores the special character
and legitimate demands of races and localities,
and subjects them to coercion of laws at variance
with their most sacred instincts.' Of such a
policy, however, the Archbishop declared that he
had little fear. The day for it was, in his opinion,
past.

If the tone of this document might seem to
foreshadow the future development of his convic
tions on Irish affairs, the account of a conversa
tion with Leo XIII. belonging to the same year
proves that he was as yet far from being in
sympathy with national aspirations. The preser
vation of the imperial unity was, he told the Pope,
vital to the three kingdoms, and to Ireland above all ;
though adding that, under this condition, there was
no domestic administration that the latter ought
not to have. The Pope, he said, appeared relieved,
as if he had expected Home Rule from him.

126 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

More explicit still was his declarations, quoted
in the same note, to the effect that what was
needful was ' amministrazione domestica, ma
Parlamento no : sarebbe preludio di conflitto e
di separazione.'

In 1880 he still continued to maintain the same
attitude of opposition to the Nationalist policy ;
going so far as to give his approval to the measures
taken in order to crush the popular agitation. ' My
censure of Gladstone's government,' he wrote at
this time, ' is not for their Coercion Bill, but for
not coercing horseplay before it grew into boy
cotting, and boycotting before it grew into outrage,
beginning a year and a half ago. But in their
Land Bill I go beyond all that they have done.
... It is thirteen years of added injustice, not
coercion, that has demoralised the people of Ire
land.'

The passage reads curiously, in the light of the
views he was in no long time to embrace ; and so
late as the year 1885, he is found condemning, in
a letter to the Pope, the demand for an Irish
Parliament. But this was his final utterance of
the kind. When Mr. Gladstone introduced his
Home Rule Bill in 1886, the only objection the
Cardinal urged was directed against the transfer
ence of Irish members from Westminster to

CHANGED OPINIONS 127

Dublin — an arrangement perilous to Catholic
interests in the Imperial Parliament. He could
not, he told those members themselves, spare one
of them from Westminster.

Amongst the results of his change of opinion
was the renewal, on the score of a common interest
and a common aim, of his old friendship with Mr.
Gladstone — so far, that is, as such ties, once broken,
are capable of reconstruction. Already, in 1885,
there had been signs that the bitterness aroused
by the controversy then eleven years old was
yielding to the influence of time, and that older
memories were regaining their supremacy. 'We
have been twice parted,' the Cardinal wrote in
answer to some letter from the statesman, ' but as
the path declines, as you say, it narrows, and I
am glad that we are again nearing each other as
we near our end.' l Two years later he still more
definitely cancelled past dissensions. Writing in
1887, he pointed backwards to the cause cham
pioned by both in their days of intimacy, rejoicing
that they were once more reunited.

' In the beginning of our career,' he wrote, * we
were of one mind and one heart in defending the
interests of the Anglican Church. And now, at
the close of our career, we are again of one mind
1 Morley's « Life of Gladstone.'

.

: I LIBRARY 1

128 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

and one purpose, for, second to you only, I am
the greatest Home Ruler in England.'

The religious conversion of Manning had severed
the two, the conversion of both to a new political
faith had brought the early comrades again
together. ' I forsook all things for faith,' the
Cardinal noted in a private paper of that year.
* He has forsaken his whole political past for
Ireland. He is as isolated now as I was then.
And this makes one turn to him. We are at last
and at least agreed in this.'

Definitely convinced, Cardinal Manning had
been characteristically ready to proclaim his
principles ; and, heedless of the indignation
roused thereby, he declared himself publicly a
supporter of the Nationalist cause. In a long
letter printed in the Times> and addressed to
a correspondent who had drawn his attention
to the fears entertained by alarmists that a
Nationalist victory would be followed in Ireland
by religious persecution, he made his new position
clear. Of religious intolerance, should the country
be handed over to Parnellite rule, he had no fear.
Parnell, he pointed out, was a Protestant, and in
no way a man likely to persecute Protestantism.
Further, his power lay in the trust and sympathy
of Catholics, who, in Ireland, had always respected

A HOME RULER 129

liberty of conscience. The children of martyrs
were not persecutors. Turning to the wider
question of a change in the system of government,
he did not shrink from avowing his convictions.
Ireland had for centuries been held by a garrison.
The time was come for her to be handed over to
herself. Her people had attained their majority.
' Mr. Parnell has done what no other man at
tempted to do. He has filled the place he found
vacant. He has known the needs and interpreted
the desire of the Irish people. Therefore he leads.
But the transfer of self-government is not to Mr.
Parnell nor to Parnellites, but to Ireland and to
the Irish people.' Passing on to the wrongdoing
committed during the conflict — to its unwisdom
and crime — if, he said, he did not gratify those
who spoke of and saw nothing else, by denouncing
these deplorable blemishes — ignominious brands
upon a cause essentially just and sacred — it was
not that he denied or condoned them. But they
were made use of for a purpose and obscured the
truth. For the rest, Mr. Parnell and his followers
were the forlorn hope which had carried the strong
hold. Forlorn hopes did their work, and were for
ever remembered with gratitude and honour ; but
they returned to the army out of which they came,
and the army held the field.

130 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Such a declaration left no room for misinterpre
tation or doubt, and in the excited state of public
feeling it could not fail to produce fierce indigna
tion on the part of those English and Irish hostile
to the Nationalist creed. Of the violence of con
servative sentiment a printed letter addressed to
the Cardinal by the O'Donoghue is an example.
Expressing veneration for his office and regard
for his person, the writer declared that his own
sensations, on the present occasion, were what he
might have experienced had he seen a sacred
vessel from the altar clutched by impious hands
and applied to profane uses.

Partisan criticism was not likely to turn the
Cardinal from his course : and the counter
balancing welcome accorded him in the National
ist ranks was warm. Amidst the hopes and
fears and excitement of the days when success
seemed near at hand, their new ally was eagerly
sought by the men engaged in fighting the battle,
secure of his sympathy, counsel, and encourage
ment. In zeal for the cause they had at heart he
was behind none of them, and the fashion in which
he met them on their own ground is curiously
illustrated by a story related by a member of
Parliament who, in spite of his youth, had had no
small experience of Irish gaols. The Cardinal had

NATURE OF HIS OPINIONS 131

told the Pope, so he informed Mr. William Red
mond lightly, that it was fortunate he had been
made Archbishop of Westminster, rather than of
Dublin or Cashel, since in the latter case he
himself would certainly have been in prison.

As to the exact nature and completeness of his
conversion opinions differ. It is not impossibly
true — in the absence of definite explanation on
his part there is a difficulty in pronouncing with
certainty — that his Irish politics were not in every
respect in agreement with those of the Nationalist
party. He had never disguised his conviction
that, as he once wrote to M. Decurtins, political
and diplomatic questions gave place to questions of
the labour of women and children, hours of work,
and kindred subjects ; and in Ireland, as elsewhere,
the social aspect of the desired changes probably
appealed to him in a greater degree than those
that were purely political. An Englishman, too,
it was only by sympathy and imagination that he
was capable of sharing the national enthusiasm of
the Irish, then at fever heat. But, however that
may have been, his adhesion to the broad principle
of nationality, the encouragement and support
always at the service of those who maintained it,
was sufficient to win for him the gratitude and
love of the Irish on either side of the channel, and

132 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

it is vain for his would-be apologists to endeavour
to explain away or to minimise his open confession
of faith.

' The day of restitution has nearly come/ he
wrote to Mr. William O'Brien. * I hope to see the
day-break, and I hope you will see the noon-tide ;
when the people of Ireland will be re-admitted, so
far as is possible, to the possession of their own
soil, and shall be admitted, so far as possible, to
the making and administration of their own local
laws, while they shall still share in the legislation
which governs and consolidates the Empire.'

The Cardinal was not destined to see the
realisation of his hopes ; and meantime a fresh
complication had been introduced, by the arrival
upon the scene of a papal delegate, charged with
the duty of inquiring upon the spot into certain
features of the situation in Ireland. The Liberal
defeat and the consequent indefinite postponement
of Nationalist hopes had been followed by renewed
agitation, the Plan of Campaign and the system
of boycotting being the weapons chiefly employed.
Bishops and priests were at one with their people ;
and all were united in resistance to a system felt
to be intolerable, when it became known that
Monsignor Persico was on his way to perform his
mission. To Cardinal Manning the principle of

MONSIGNOR PERSICO'S MISSION 133

interference from Rome, save through the Bishops,
was distasteful in the extreme. His views were
known ; and when a rumour gained currency that
Monsignor Persico's mission had been revoked,
the Times ascribed the fact to his instances,
supported by those of Arcjhbishop Walsh ; adding
that 'the active promoters of separatist intrigues
are hardly the persons who should have a
determining voice in the councils of the Church.'
The attack was made at a vulnerable point, and it
was not left unanswered. The letter in which the
Cardinal replied to the charge is an example
both of his chivalry in associating himself with a
colleague in disrepute and his method of doing so.
There were times, he wrote, when he held resent
ment to be a duty. The statement made by the
Times was false. As to the charges brought, he
added, * I gladly unite myself with the Archbishop
of Dublin. He is but slightly known in England,
except in the descriptions of those who are
fanning the flames of animosity between England
and Ireland. I am known in England both to
Ministers of the Crown and to the leaders of the
Opposition. I leave to them, who well know my
mind, to answer for me ; and I, who know the
mind of the Archbishop of Dublin, answer for
him. We are neither intriguers nor separatists.'

134 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

To the delegate himself he was equally explicit,
strongly deprecating any intervention in Irish
affairs except through the ordinary channels.
Were a papal Rescript to be issued over the
heads of the episcopate, he declared that, in the
excited condition of the country, he was unable
to answer for the consequences.

His advice was disregarded, and the Rescript
in condemnation of the Plan of Campaign and the
system of boycotting was promulgated direct
from Rome, straining to the uttermost the loyalty
and trust of the men who had been driven to
employ those weapons of the weak. In an
autobiographical note, dated 1890, the Cardinal
explained his action with regard to this episode, and
made manifest the light in which he regarded the
papal intervention. Before quoting it, it is well
that the nature of the practices condemned should
be made clear, as well as the data on which the
Rescript had been founded.

What boycotting was is well known. The Plan
of Campaign has been probably widely misunder
stood in England. It was, briefly, the formation
of associations consisting of the tenants of a given
locality, each of whom was to proffer to the
landlord what was estimated by the whole body
to be a fair rent for his holding. If refused, these

THE PAPAL RESCRIPT 135

sums were to be paid into a general fund, to be
applied to the maintenance of evicted tenants. By
judges who knew and trusted the leaders who had
devised and supervised this method of reduc
ing extortionate rents, there was little exception
to be taken to the system ; but it was easy to
represent it in England and in foreign countries as
a conspiracy to defraud the landowners of what
was justly due to them. With regard to the
means by which the Rescript condemning these
practices was obtained no less misconception
prevailed, the general belief being embodied in an
address presented to Monsignor Persico on the
conclusion of his mission and signed by a large
number of Irish Catholic landlords, * in the fervent
hope that his Excellency's mission might largely
conduce to the glory of God, the increase of
charity, and the restoration of peace and goodwill
among men ' — in other words, that the Nationalist
party would be discredited and rents would
continue to be paid as before.

The assumption that the Rescript was based
upon the reports and advice of the man sent to
examine into the matter upon the spot was a
legitimate one. It was not until after some
sixteen years had passed that the publication1

1 United Irishman , May 14, 1904.

136 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

of a portion of the correspondence between
Cardinal Manning and the papal delegate threw
an altogether different light upon his share in the
transaction.

' It is known to your Eminence,' wrote Persico
to the Cardinal after the issue of the Rescript,
1 that I did not expect at all the said decree, that
I was never so much surprised in my life as when
I received the bare circular from Propaganda. . . .
And, what is more unaccountable to me, only the
day before I had received a letter from the
Secretary for the Extraordinary Ecclesiastical
Affairs, telling me that nothing had been done
about Irish affairs, and that my report and other
letters were still nella casetta del Emo. Rampolla !
And yet the whole world thinks and says that the
Holy Office has acted on my report, and that the
decree is based upon the same. Not only all the
Roman correspondents, but all the newspapers,
avec le Tablet en t$te, proclaim and report the same
thing. I wish that my report and all my letters
had been studied and seriously considered, and
that action had been taken from the same. Above
all, I had proposed and insisted upon it, that
whatever was necessary to be done, ought to be
done with and through the Bishops.'

With this emphatic and earnest disclaimer of

THE PAPAL RESCRIPT 137

responsibility on the part of the man who had
spent some six months in Ireland, mastering, so
far as was possible for a foreigner to master, the
situation in that country, it is not difficult to
understand the position taken up by the Cardinal
in his autobiographical note. Admitting that in
itself the decree was absolutely true, just, and
useful in the abstract, he pointed out that the
condition of Ireland was abnormal, and that the
decree contemplated facts that were non-existent,
and would have been more truly known and more
safely judged on the spot. The Plan of Campaign
was not a dogmatic fact, and it was one thing to
declare all legal agreements binding, and another
to say that all agreements in Ireland were legal.
What was legally just was there morally unjust ;
and the sanction of the former should have been
followed by a condemnation of the latter.

In Ireland the decree took little effect. By one
Bishop alone was it published to the people, and
the Archbishop of Cashel sent a subscription to
the Plan of Campaign. Further, Mr. Parnell
having declared that it was for his Catholic col
leagues to decide for themselves what steps to
take as to 'a document from a distant country/
some forty of them held a meeting, pronounced
the conclusions contained in it to have been drawn

138 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

from erroneous premisses, and, asserting their
complete obedience to the Holy See in matters
spiritual, denied its right to intervene in political
questions. A letter from the Pope to the Arch
bishop of Dublin, belonging to the end of the year,
may be regarded as closing the incident; when,
referring to the action 'so sadly misunderstood/
he stated that he had been prompted, not by the
consideration of what was conformable to truth
and justice alone, but also by the desire of advanc
ing Irish interests, and of not allowing the cause
in which Ireland was struggling to be weakened
by any reproach that could justly be brought
against it.

That the episode had in no way interfered with
the cordiality of the relations between the English
Cardinal and the Irish party was manifest. On
the celebration of his silver jubilee in 1890, some
fifty of its members, Mr. Parnell at their head,
presented him with an address of congratulation.
In his reply the Cardinal, after referring to the
London Irish, proceeded to speak of Ireland
itself.

' My present feeling,' he said, ' is one of the
most profound hope. Ireland has entered into
the most intimate and cordial union with the
English people. If I know anything, I know the

IRISH APPRECIATION 139

working people of England ; and I know at this
moment that the hearts of the working people
of England have turned to Ireland in true and
perfect sympathy.'

The Cardinal was to be proved to be mis
taken. The time was close at hand when the
hopes then so high were to be shattered, and the
abandonment of their leader was to be followed
by a period of disruption amongst the Irish party
resulting in the indefinite and deserved postpone
ment of the realisation of national aspirations. But
his identification with the national cause endeared
him for ever to the Irish people. In a country he
had never visited his name was familiar and hon
oured, and after his death the organ of the Dublin
Jesuits bore generous testimony to the services
rendered to their nation and to humanity by the
man never reputed to be a friend of their order.
He had, it was pointed out, read aright the signs
of the times, his natural democracy quickened and
strengthened by the conviction that the future of
the Church would be determined by the masses.
Though his advocacy of Irish claims and relations
with Irish members were said to have cost him
not a few friendships, and his advocacy of London
labour had drawn upon him the censure and
sarcasm of the friends of employers, he held on

140 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

his way unmoved by opposition, and had his
reward in the spread among the rulers of the
Church of the spirit and views of which he was the
exponent.1

1 Lyceum.

CHAPTER IX

Increasing Age — Multiplicity of Interests — The Cardinal's
Visitors — Henry George.

THE years were creeping on. To some men it
happens that, by no fault of their own, but by the
simple action of time and circumstance, they fall
out of the march, and withdrawing to some quiet
place of rest for mind and body, passively await
the end. Who should blame them ? With Car
dinal Manning this was never the case. As he
had lived, so he was determined to die, at his post.
He did not recognise the duty of averting death,
so long as it is possible to do so, by timely pre
cautions, and when urged on one occasion to spend
a winter in the south he was resolute in his refusal
to listen to his counsellors.

' When my Father opens His door/ he answered,
* and wants Henry Edward Manning within, shall
not the child be waiting on the doorstep ? '

For Henry Edward Manning the waiting place
was Westminster ; and at Westminster he remained,
active in body and mind, labouring unweariedly till
the call came to summon him hence.

141

142 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

As age grew upon him, it brought, rather than
any diminution of cares, a greater variety of duties
and interests. Side by side with his multifarious
public avocations — his temperance work, his un
ceasing efforts on behalf of religious education,
his ecclesiastical responsibilities, his participation
in every movement calculated to better the condi
tion of the poor — ran his comparatively private life
— the life of a man whose doors were never shut
against those who individually sought his help
and counsel. Men of all kinds resorted to him in
increasing numbers, for comfort in their trials,
encouragement in their defeats, or to gain a re
newal of strength to enable them to fight their
battles afresh. His patience was almost inexhaust
ible.1 All, of whatever faith or unfaith, were wel
come, and crowded around him, certain that, asking
bread, they would not receive a stone. A universal
physician, it was perhaps most of all such as were
wounded in the fight with privilege and power
and monopoly that appealed to him for aid.
Personally no rebel, asking for himself nothing, he

1 Mr. Purcell records one outburst of impatience on the Cardinal's
part ; when, on some occasion, his attention had been claimed by
uncongenial guests. In the face of the unanimous testimony borne
by other witnesses to the welcome found by all sorts and conditions
of men at Archbishop's House, his biographer's account of a solitary
mood, due it may be to weariness or strain, may fairly be dis
regarded.

PORTRAITS OF THE CARDINAL 143

was the friend of rebels — rebels not so much
against one form of oppression or another, as
against the tyranny of circumstances hemming in
men's lives on every side, crippling and maiming
them, and condemning, by what appeared to some
an unalterable decree, the mass of human kind to
hardship, want, and suffering.

It was not, however, the poor and the oppressed
alone who felt his attraction. Something in his
personality struck and kindled the imagination of
men of opposite views, compelling them, like Mr.
Page Roberts, to confess that there was a fascina
tion in asceticism, and to declare that ' the prelates
of humanism looked like heathen in the presence
of such white austerity.' Description after descrip
tion, at a time when he had taken his place as one
of the most notable features of contemporary
London, testify to the effect he produced upon
young and old, of every shade of opinion, religious
and political. Disraeli paints portraits too familiar
for reproduction ; a younger associate of these
later years places upon record the impression pro
duced by the dignity of his bearing ; describing
how, though never putting himself forward or assert
ing his rank, he was always the most conspicuous
figure wherever he might be present ; and yet
another witness testifies to his singular accessibility

144 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

to all who needed what he could give. ' Not the
humblest docker, not the youngest child, not the
hardest unbeliever, found in him any greatness, as
earth's personages are great. ... To be of service
to you seemed the special object of his life. . . .
His heart seemed to bound and sing with the
enjoyment of the thought that he could be
anything of a helper to the helpless amongst
men.'1

A gift noticed by one observer was his power
of searching the secrets of character with a
glance. To a man whose duty it is to select
instruments, few faculties could be more valuable.
But that he supplemented natural intuition by
unhurried care and thought, is curiously illustrated
by the account of a first interview given by a
woman who had come, a stranger, to his house,
to seek his opinion as to a certain course of
action. Not until he had conversed with her
for approximately an hour upon topics uncon
nected with the object of her visit, and had thus
gauged her powers and capacities, would he
consent to pronounce his verdict, telling her that
he believed she was capable of carrying out her
purpose, that it would be well to do so, and
bestowing his blessing upon her undertaking.

1 Rev. B. Waugh. Contemporary Review, Feb. 1899.

THE CARDINAL'S GUESTS 145

It was no isolated instance of the fashion in
which he was ready to give deliberate attention in
response to the demands of those who, in the
common phrase, had no claim upon him. The
servant of servants, the Cardinal democrat was
always prepared to sacrifice his leisure to those
in need of it. To all he was a friend, meeting
them, now gravely, now lightly, on their own
ground ; no less at home with the man who saw in
him merely a fellow-worker in a common cause,
than with the Catholic who bent the knee to him
as a Prince of the Church.

' Have you seen Mr. Mann ? ' he asked some
one, glancing at his own frail hand with a laugh,
as he recalled the strong grip of the labour leader.
' It hurts,' he added, * but I like it.'

In his great empty house — the house of a man
who once said, ' I feel at times ashamed to own
anything ' — he lived the life of an ascetic. ' He
did not,' wrote Archdeacon Farrar after his
death, ' regard luxury and ostentation as necessary
to the maintenance of his position, but lived in a
bare house, on meals which would make ninety-
nine servants out of a hundred give notice after a
day's trial. He has left behind him a great name
and a great example, and it would be well for the

Church of England if she had one or two Bishops

K

146 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

who would learn from him how a great ecclesiastic
may win the enthusiastic confidence of the working
classes, and stamp his influence on the humani^
tarian progress of the age/ 1

Such were the words of a man regarding the
Cardinal from a standpoint far removed from his
own. Notwithstanding his strong religious tenets,
he had the faculty of throwing down barriers and
establishing bonds of union on all sides. ' Oh,
Manning — he is not an ecclesiastic — he belongs
to us all/ was the reply of a statesman who,
objecting to the presence of clerical members on
a charitable committee, was informed that the
Cardinal had already been placed on it. A demo
crat who had never made a secret of his convictions,
he was on cordial terms with conservative poli
ticians from whom he differed in almost every
respect. ' In the dark and disturbing days on
which we have fallen/ wrote Lord Beaconsfield,
shortly before his death, in acknowledging a new
year's letter, ' so fierce with faction even amongst
the most responsible, the voice of patriotism
from one so eminent as yourself will animate
the faltering, and add courage even to the
brave' — ending with the expression of his deep
regard.

1 Review of the Churches, March, 1892.

POLITICAL ATTITUDE 147

Where he could approve, he approved ; he did
not hesitate to make use of men whose general
policy he condemned when they could be turned
to the service of God and the poor. Whether it
is well to do so remains to some of us a question.
To employ only instruments which have been
proved trustworthy may in the end repay delay.
But to refuse the help of none where a purpose
was to be served was the Cardinal's habit, open
and avowed ; and if his course was thereby occa
sionally rendered politically devious, he brought
no pressure to bear to induce others to follow in
his steps.

( It would seem to me/ he wrote in answer to
the question of an elector in 1885, 'that voters
must vote, after all, according to their own con
victions. It is not unreasonable or in any way
wrong to try to convince a voter of what we
believe to be right or better. But beyond this we
have no right or duty. I always hold myself to
be officially bound to neutrality, and leave my
clergy and flock perfectly free.'

It would be well if all teachers of religion would
follow the Cardinal's example.

Whilst the cordiality of his terms with men of
all schools has been described, it was perhaps
inevitable that those who considered themselves

148 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

to possess a more exclusive right to his thought
and care should have been disposed to indulge in
some jealousy at the breadth of his sympathies,
and to look with suspicion upon the links binding
him to men of every opinion, social, political, and
religious. Some feeling of this kind may be
responsible for his biographer's tone in charac
terising the guests who frequented Archbishop's
House during these later years. It would be
easy to attach too much importance to the an
imadversions of a critic plainly hostile, yet it is
possible that they reflect to some degree the
irritation felt by a portion of his flock.

1 Social reformers, political agitators, defenders
of the rights of labour, denouncers of the rights
of property, advocates of the disestablishment of
churches and of the emancipation of women ; l
upholders of a free breakfast-table, and of free
education under the control and management of
the parish beadle ; enthusiastic visionaries who
saw the coming of a millennium in which religion,
turned out of the churches, should be marshalled
and regulated according to the gospel of General
Booth' — this does not exhaust the catalogue to
be found in the pages of a writer incapable of

1 The Women's Rights movement was, in fact, one with which
the Cardinal was not in sympathy.

THE CARDINAL'S GUESTS 149

understanding the objects, aims, or interests of
the ' hero of charity ' to whom nothing human
was common or unclean. To Archbishop's House,
says Mr. Purcell, came all who had a grievance to
urge, a cause to advocate, a mission or message to
deliver, a new code of morals or gospel to preach.
Unjust as it would be to accept his biographer's
angry contempt as in any true sense representa
tive of the sentiments of English Catholics, the
attitude of disapproval or coldness adopted by a
section of those belonging to his faith and creed
cannot have failed to be painful to a man as
sensitive, as full of craving for sympathy, as the
Cardinal Archbishop. Again, though the sweep
ing statement that ' the leading Catholic laity took
no interest in the social and political questions
which he had taken to heart, and consequently
stood aloof/ might not be accepted upon Mr.
Purcell's authority alone, it is impossible to deny
that the Cardinal's own words, on more than one
occasion, tend to confirm and endorse it, showing
that he was often compelled to carry on his
labours in some sort single-handed. In his
temperance work it has been seen that this was
the case, and even in matters more directly con
nected with religion the same absence of practical
help appears to have existed.

ISO THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

' Catholics to-day,' he is quoted as saying,1 * take
no interest in Catholic affairs of a public character.
Some pious and prominent men and women, never
too many, during the season are most zealous and
active ; superintend or organise schools in the
East End ; help in the opening of new missions
or in establishing refuges or homes for the sick or
poor. But in a month or two, when the season is
over, they go away, and leave me to work alone.'

The words may have been spoken in a mood
of despondency ; the despondency nevertheless
points to a sense of loneliness. Such loneliness
was perhaps inevitable. The heights are solitary;
and the very fact that his position and the work he
carried on were unique had necessarily the effect
of setting him in a measure apart. Once more
to quote the same writer, ' in the isolation of his
last years he lived a life of his own imaginings,
indulged in visionary theories, dreamed dreams,
fancying he saw a new order of things — mistaking
things ephemeral for things eternal — growing up
under his hands.' In other words, he dreamed of
social regeneration for the poverty-stricken and the
suffering ; of deliverance from misery and hardship
for the toilers and labourers of the world; of

1 Again, this rests upon Mr. Purcell's authority, and must be
taken with reserve.

THE CARDINAL'S GUESTS 151

sympathy and love and co-operation independent
of distinctions of class and creed ; and above all,
of the reconciliation of the religion of Christ —
pre-eminently represented in his eyes by the
Catholic Church — and the democracy.

To return to the visitors to Archbishop's House,
amongst those who found a welcome there at this
period were Michael Davitt and Henry George.
Discussing with the American reformer the
question of land nationalisation, the Cardinal was
favourably impressed by his earnestness, quiet,
and calm ; giving in a letter to the Brooklyn
Review an account of the conversation, and of
the fashion in which he himself had cleared the
way for argument by ascertaining to what degree
he was in accord with his visitor, and how far
opposed to him, on fundamental axioms.

* Before we go further,' the Cardinal said, ' let me
know whether we are in agreement upon one vital
principle. I believe that the law of property is
founded on the lawof nature,and that it is sanctioned
in revelation, declared in the Christian law, taught
by the Catholic Church, and incorporated in the
civilisation of all nations. Therefore, unless we
are in agreement upon this, which lies at the
foundation of society, I am afraid we cannot
approach each other.'

152 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

By Mr. George's answer the Cardinal under
stood that he did not deny the principle in
question, and that his contention was mainly
directed against the intolerable evils resulting
from an exaggeration of the legal provisions
connected with it.

' He added/ said the Cardinal, ' that the present
separation and opposition of the rich and poor
were perilous to society, and that he saw no
remedy for them but in the example and teach
ings of Christ. He spoke fully and reverently
on this subject.'

In the two men, unlike in much, there existed
one essential point of union — love of God and
man. They had, says an eye-witness of the
interview, travelled to the same goal from opposite
directions.

' 1 loved the people/ said Henry George, ' and
that love brought me to Christ as their best friend
and teacher.'

' And I/ said the Cardinal, ' loved Christ, and
so learned to love the people for whom He died.'

And thus they parted.

It is affirmed that in Mr. George's subsequent
work, ' Poverty and Progress/ the Cardinal found
matter for disapproval or condemnation. At the
time of the visit he had only read the 'Social

THE CARDINAL'S GUESTS 153

Problems,' in which he had seen nothing worthy of
censure. However this may be ; and though it is
not unlikely that the opinions of the two diverged
on many points, divergence need not imply lack
of sympathy, and Henry George recognised that
sympathy and was grateful for it. If, to others,
offence was given, it was only what was to be
expected. Men to whom democratic principles,
a belief in the sovereignty of the people, the
abolition of class monopolies, were doctrines ab
horrent and subversive, could scarcely fail to regard
the Cardinal's ' dreams ' as mischievous and peril
ous ; to fear and shun the means he used to
materialise them ; and to view his friendly inter
course with popular leaders with uneasiness and
disapproval.

CHAPTER X

The Social Purity Crusade— Trafalgar Square Riot— The
Cardinal's Opinion of the Government.

DURING the year 1885 the difference of judgment
sometimes severing the Cardinal from those by
whom he was surrounded, as well as from a large
portion of the British public, was accentuated by
a painful episode described by his biographer
in exaggerated and hysterical language. This was
what was termed the Social Purity Crusade.

In considering the fearlessness he displayed, not
on this occasion alone but on others, in braving
disapproval and misinterpretation, it should be
borne in mind that it was not the result of indiffer
ence. If he was self-reliant to a fault, and rash in
resisting censure and condemnation, he was never
callous with regard to adverse criticism, and was
very humanly sensitive and resentful of attack,
even in cases where he could well have afforded to
treat his assailants with contempt. In his calmer
moments, indeed, he could disregard them. Thus,
on one occasion, lectured by the Times from a

154

SOCIAL PURITY CRUSADE 155

height of superiority, he characterised the assertion
that he mistook cause and effect with a touch of
humour. It was the sort of criticism, he observed,
that an undergraduate would make. ' I am told/
he added, ' that in the present day the Times is a
good deal written by undergraduates.' In more
serious moods, he could also appraise the insinua
tions of those who perhaps had a grudge to satisfy,
or an object to serve, at a just valuation. One
anonymous dissentient, he would reflect, was noisy ;
others who listened and believed were silent. He
might perhaps know one day what mark he had
left. His desire was to say, with St. Paul, * You
are my epistle, written in my hand, and known and
read of all men ' — poor children, poor drunkards,
and perhaps a few other souls.

But whilst these were the conclusions of his
cooler judgment, there were times when the irre
sponsible abuse of newspapers — carefully preserved
— wounded him to a curious degree ; and though
he might allow it to pass unnoticed so far as any
public reply was concerned, he was accustomed to
set down in writing the refutation of the charges
brought against him ; to make his defence, so to
speak, at his private bar ; and to vindicate himself,
not to the world but to conscience, the master to
whom alone he stood or fell. The soreness and

156 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

indignation visible in these notes give proof of a
susceptibility to blame or misconception which
must often, in the course of his chequered career,
have been a cause of acute suffering. ' This false
hood is truly brutal — may God forgive the writer,'
he wrote on one occasion. And again, ' I hope
that when I am gone these lies may not " make
history " about me.'

Whilst this vulnerability to attack must be
counted as a failing, it also serves to throw into
relief his boldness in inviting it ; and never was
this boldness more marked than in the autumn of
1885, in connection with a great social abuse, and
the methods to be pursued in the endeavour to
combat an evil recognised and deplored by all
alike.

The cause of the helpless victims of the present
conditions of society and modern civilisation was
especially calculated to appeal to a man who, while
uncompromisingly severe in his denunciation of
vice, and especially of the vices of the rich, was
ever pitiful towards sinners.

More than forty years earlier, as Archdeacon of
Chichester, he had preached on the subject of
fallen women. ' None are to be pitied more/ he
said. ' None are more sinned against. Shame,
fear, and horror bar their return. The drop has

SOCIAL PURITY CRUSADE 157

fallen ; behind them is a gulf they cannot pass.'
Contrasting their present and their past, he had
drawn a picture of the life of innocence and hope
they had left behind, and had told of the end that
awaited them, far from mother, brother, husband,
child. 'Then comes death, and after death the
judgment, and the great white throne on which
He sitteth from whose face both heaven and earth
shall flee away.'

Forty-one years had passed since those words
had been spoken, and the evil was as great —
greater — than ever. 'The luxury of the west of
London,' he once told a wealthy congregation
when pleading for funds to carry on rescue work,
'has produced a rankness and audacity of vice,
thinly veiled, or open and bare-faced, such as was
found hardly in Rome of old, or in any city that
I know in the civilised world.' Of poor children
belonging to east end homes not worthy of the
name, what could, he asked, be expected ? Dom
estic life had been destroyed ; the streets were full
of temptation ; opportunities for drink, the most
powerful and successful of all enemies of souls —
being not one sin, but all sin — everywhere.

Into the subject of the means employed to
bring the evil in question to light, this is not the
place to enter, but in a study of the Cardinal's

158 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

social work, the Cardinal's attitude towards it
cannot be overlooked. The words in which he
alluded to the matter when, during the last year
of his life, he was recording the experience he had
gained, are significant of much besides the actual
case in point. ' In the uprising against the horrible
depravity which destroys young girls — multitudes
of ours — ,' he then wrote, ' I was literally denounced
by Catholics ; not one came forward. If it was ill
done, why did nobody try to mend it ? '

The question is the key to his position. The
means taken to amend what was infamous might
have been ill-chosen ; and it may be that, in retro
spect, a doubt as to the wisdom of the methods
employed found admittance into his mind ; but at
the time, confronted by an immense and terrible
evil, he could not afford to inquire too strictly into
the course pursued in the attempt to combat it,
and, fully convinced of the honesty and rectitude
of the man responsible for that attempt, he stood
firmly by Mr. Stead, was his advocate through
good report and ill, and adhered to the line he
had adopted in spite of remonstrance, protest, and
entreaty. Whether he was right or wrong in his
judgment may certainly be questioned, but the
courage and the indifference to public opinion he
displayed is eminently characteristic. Reasons

SOCIAL PURITY CRUSADE 159

for a neutral attitude would not have been far to
seek ; but if there was unwisdom in his unflinching
partisanship, it was the generous unwisdom of a
man whose habit it was, from first to last, when
soever sinners were to be rescued or evil to be
fought, to fling himself into the quarrel, and who
never deserted a cause because it was reviled.

In the present instance no one had power to
move him one iota from his purpose ; and a private
letter printed after his death, referring to an
entreaty not to introduce the subject into an ex
pected pastoral, shows the spirit with which he
resented interference, however well-intentioned, in
the discharge of what he regarded as a public duty.

' As to the pastoral, not a word,' he wrote. ' I
should forget all laws of proportion and fitness if
I took notice of the gross impertinence of Abra
ham's children. If, and when, I saw fit to issue a
pastoral, twelve tribes of Pharisees and Scribes
would not hinder me. What do they take me for,
and what do they imagine themselves to be ? '

A protest from inmates of his house against the
display upon his table of the newspaper then in ill
repute, whilst proving the strength of the feeling
aroused against the line he had taken, met with
no greater success. ' The remonstrance,' it is
added, ' was never repeated.'

160 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Two years later he found himself for once, and
surely to his own surprise, on the side of the
authorities, and in opposition to popular senti
ment. This was on the occasion of the collision
between police and people in Trafalgar Square.
According to his habit, he judged the incident,
like others, on its own merits, and in this instance
sided with what is called the party of law and
order. Strongly as he felt the necessity of vindi
cating the right of public meeting, he was of
opinion that it was not now imperilled ; that law
and liberty were, in England, in no danger ; that
occurrences such as that which had taken place in
Trafalgar Square acted as a check upon the spread
of sympathy with Ireland, and the restitution of
justice to that country. The combination of
socialists and of that outcast population which is
the rebuke, sin, shame, and scandal of society, and
would become its scourge, was a misrepresentation
of law, liberty, and justice. The appeal to physical
force was criminal and immoral, venial in men
maddened by suffering, but inexcusable in others.

Thus he wrote to an advocate of the course
pursued, in uncompromising condemnation of it,
though making the reservation in excuse of some
of those concerned in the affray — the poor and
the struggling — which comes like a refrain in his

TRAFALGAR SQUARE 161

utterances. As a general principle, however, his
faith and confidence in the rectitude of the people
was almost unlimited, and if he considered it right,
on this occasion, to express his disapproval of
democratic methods, a private document belong
ing to the year 1890, containing a general indict
ment of the conduct and policy of the government
in office at the time, indicates that his disapproba
tion arose from no sympathy with the ministry.
That ministry he characterised as one relying
upon force, which had given Ireland a Crimes
Act and not one remedy for its just complaints,
had filled Trafalgar Square with soldiers, domi
nated the crofters by means of a gunboat, and
had had the Guards ready to intervene in the
Docker's Strike. ' The present Government,'
he wrote, ' is morally weak and unpopular. They
know it, and they rely on force under the
plea of maintaining law, order, and authority.
And they are irritating and goading Ireland into
intemperate speech. A goaded people loses calm
ness and self-control. It puts itself in the wrong
under provocation, and is put down by force. . . .
England is becoming seriously disturbed. The
classes are alarmed and the masses irritated. . . .
The millions of what I may call the "labour
world" possess the suffrage. And to them the

162 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

political power is steadily devolving. They are
both reasonable and just. They are calm and
conservative. The Thames Strike was ended by
reason and free-will. The Miners' Strike of
300,000 men was ended by reason and free-will.
If Government will meet the people face to face,
neither soldiers nor police will be needed. If
Government treats the people as lords and squires
treat their keepers and their labourers, the man
hood of Englishmen will rise against them.'

CHAPTER XI

Later Writings — Their Character — Views on the Work of
the Salvation Army— Plea for the Worthless — Irre
sponsible Wealth.

DURING the last ten years of his life, when
age was limiting the possibilities of physical
exertion, the Cardinal had frequently recourse
to his pen as a means of advocating and
furthering the causes he had at heart. In earlier
times he had taken rank as a writer. But he
had long since relinquished the ambition to
distinguish himself in that direction, and Dr.
Dollinger notices the deterioration of his art
after his conversion. He would not have denied
it.

' I believe I can say,' he wrote, ' I have had no
literary vanity since I became a priest ... I have
since then written as the time and truth demanded,
dry and unpopular matters enough.' In old days,
he notes, his books had been quoted for style.
With style he had now no concern. His object
was to urge his views with plainness and sim
plicity.

163

1 64 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

At first his writings had been mostly on purely
religious topics; but as time went on he dealt
with others, various and manifold ; with social
grievances, necessary reforms ; the means of
reaching and saving the great outcast population
of modern civilisation ; and his signature became
a frequent feature in periodical literature. To
make use of this essentially modern channel for
promulgating opinion has been termed a new
departure for a Roman Catholic ecclesiastic ; l it
was in full harmony with the Cardinal's methods.
He was, as Monseigneur Baunard, Recteur des
Faculty's Catholiques de Lille, pointed out in a
letter written after his death, pre-eminently the
man of his time and century, ' accepting it as it is,
with its progress, its spirit, its resources, its
institutions, liberty, the press, journalism, schools,
association, publicity, cosmopolitanism — all that
perfect armoury which is used against us and
that the sacred militia must know how to handle
if the day is to be won for God and God's
children.'

Not one weapon would he allow the enemy to
monopolise, especially so powerful a one as the
press. In his written appeals there was displayed

1 Bishop Ketteler, of Mainz, had been beforehand with him in
making full use of the power of the press.

LATER WRITINGS 165

the same wide spirit of charity and sympathy,
the same eagerness to take up the quarrel of
the defenceless, that pervaded his utterances
and his actions. And in this manner his
arguments reached hundreds and thousands to
whose ears they could have penetrated in no
other way.

To some it was inevitable that offence should
be given, as by his words and actions so by his
writings. The absence on his part of any jealousy
of others engaged in labouring for objects akin to
his own, but on different lines, occasionally laid
him open to misapprehension amongst the strictly
orthodox. Yet it might have been thought that
his meaning was made sufficiently clear to safe
guard his position from misconception. He had
never courted popularity by suppressing or
minimising what he believed to be the truth. On
matters of doctrine he was rigid ; his theology
was of an extreme type, and the term Liberal
Catholic is, once at least, employed in his published
writings in a condemnatory sense. But whilst on
questions specifically affecting Catholic tenets he
would accept no compromise, he was ready to
meet those outside the Church on the broad basis
of a common Christianity. It is not a man's creed
so much as his fashion of holding it that imparts

166 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

narrowness or breadth to his outlook on life ; and
the charity and indulgence resulting from know
ledge and experience were ever teaching him a
wider tolerance and a deeper apprehension of the
good underlying convictions he did not share, and
leading him to assimilate those elements in them
commending themselves to his sense of justice and
truth. Nor had he any difficulty — where many
find so much — in separating a man and his
opinions. To the Catholic ecclesiastic, for instance,
the greatness of Cromwell might not have been
expected to appeal ; but as Englishman and social
reformer, the Cardinal recognised it to the full,
declaring that, apart from the Irish expedition, he
had ever regarded the Puritan statesman as the
greatest man produced by the English race : ' no
other ruler, before or since, has united in equal
degree such faith in the imperial destinies of
England abroad, and such passionate concern for
the welfare of the common people at home.' As
in history, so it was in life. ' They draw me as
much to the writer/ he said in earlier days in
reference to some letters of an evangelical type,
'as they warn me from the path in which he
is outwardly treading. Would to God I could
walk with him in the inward path where his
feet tread surely.' The same spirit remained

WIDE SYMPATHIES 167

with him to the end, and rendered intolerance,
in the sense in which some men are intolerant, an
impossibility.

When work was to be done there could be no
doubt that he would have liked to do it. He was
confident in himself and in his powers — it is too
marked a feature not to be insisted upon again
and again as giving part of its character to his
life and labours — he was more than confident in
his Church, and was convinced — no man to a
greater degree — that his was the more excellent
way. Nor did he scruple to say so. 'You are
not following Christ so much as you think you
are/ he once told a fellow-worker bluntly. * Follow
Him enough, and you will find that out.' But he
was sufficiently wise to know that there was work
he could not do, generous enough to wish all
success to the men who were doing, or attempting
to do it, and eager to lend them co-operation — a
co-operation which they appreciated and welcomed,
' I often heard my father say of you,' Lord Shaftes-
bury's son wrote, * that whenever there was good
to be done and evil to be fought, he was sure of
you.' Lifted above petty jealousies and ignoble
rivalries by the supreme desire that, whether by
himself or others, God should be served, souls
should be rescued, and succour brought to the

168 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

needy, it was not possible that he should refuse to
acknowledge the value of other men's toil.

From his home in the centre of London he
looked out upon 'the great sinful city,' full of
evil and of the misery consequent upon evil,
considering it not only in the abstract, not only
with the impersonal compassion of the philanthro
pist or the regret of the legislator — though these
were also his — but with the eyes of a man who
was likewise a priest, and who watched and
mourned the wrecking of individual lives. Morn
ing after morning he would be seen to examine
the police reports, his face clouding as Irish
names — the names of culprits for whom he was
specially responsible — met his eye; and perhaps
he owed a portion of his power to this blending
of interest in the problems affecting masses of
men, and in the units of which those masses were
composed. It is a saying of the Abbe Mullois
that to speak well to the people it is necessary to
love them very much. This collective affection
Cardinal Manning had, and it made itself felt ;
but he combined with it that love for each single
individual which is not always the attribute of the
philanthropist.

1 You put both hands into the fire to rescue that
poor soul,' some one once said to him.

THE SALVATION ARMY 169

' Indeed I did,' was the reply.

It is men who are thus bent upon rescuing
souls who learn to measure and estimate aright
the magnitude of the task; and gauging the
extent and the malignity of the disease, the
Cardinal felt that it was not for him to place a
hindrance in the way of any physician who
desired to attempt a cure. Seen in this light, no
agency for combating the ills he saw came to him
amiss ; no method of dealing with them, however
forlorn the hope it might offer, would he discourage.
He could afford to treat no fellow-worker with
contempt or set him coldly aside.

Some men in his position would have preserved
a negative attitude ; would have contented them
selves with silence ; and, whilst abstaining from
condemnation, would have refrained from com
mitting themselves to a definite expression of
opinion. Such was not Cardinal Manning's habit,
and in 1882, when the criticism called forth by
the Salvation Army was more severe than at the
present time, he braved public opinion by a fair
and dispassionate examination of its claims to
approval, and though confessing that, with regard
to the ultimate results to be expected from its
labours, fears overbalanced hope, did not with
hold its due meed of praise and commendation.

THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Summing up the condition of society which had
rendered a like organisation possible, he pointed
out that in England millions lived and died out
side any religious body. Half the population of
London were practically without God in the
world, and this state of things was the raison
d'etre of such a body as that founded by General
Booth. 'A watchman's rattle is good at night,
when men are sleeping. It is needless at noon
day, when men are wide awake.' The response
called forth by the Salvation Army was the
measure of the need to which it corresponded.
London's spiritual desolation alone made it
possible. To such a population a voice crying
aloud in God's name was as a warning in the
night. In the most outcast a voice answered.
The words death, judgment, heaven, hell, were not
mere sounds, but strokes upon the soul. The
mass of men believed in right and wrong,
judgment to come, hoped for a better world,
believed that sin committed here found its sequel
in a worse world. This was Wesley's strength ;
it was also the strength of William Booth ; and
good seed grew whoever might be the sower.
' Our heart's desire and prayer is that they who
labour so fervently with the truths they have, may
be led into the fulness of faith, and that they who

THE SALVATION ARMY 171

are so ready to give their lives for the salvation of
souls may be rewarded with life eternal/

Nine years later the Cardinal repeated, even
more emphatically, his appreciation of the work
and aims of the Salvation Army. Regarded as a
religious movement he had, he said, no duty, here
and now, to sit in judgment upon General Booth's
project ; but in its character as a work of simple
humanity, he declared it worthy of sympathy and
support. At the present time three agencies
existed for the relief of distress : first, the Poor
Law, practically narrowed to those who were
willing to enter the workhouse as paupers ;
secondly, the Charity Organisation Society, which,
though it was doing great good, avowedly rejected
the unworthy, and was therefore inadequate as a
means of reaching all ; and, thirdly, private alms,
leaving, in spite of their amount, a vast desolation
of misery untouched.

This being the case, who, asked the Cardinal,
that cared for human misery and ruin, could for
bid others to do what they themselves were unable
to do? General Booth had a great organisation
of devoted men and women ready to go and wade
in the midst of this dead sea of suffering. Only
by means of human sympathy and human voices,
appealing face to face with outcast and ruined

THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

souls, could men be won back to human life and
to the law of God. If Booth could reach those
whom other agencies fail to reach, who should for
bid him ? If his zeal should rebuke the indolence
of some, restore those rejected by others, and
recall to order and rectitude those passed by as
hopeless and worthless, it was a salutary lesson,
to be thankfully learned. Let him try his hand,
and if he failed, let others do better. Above all,
it was intolerable to hinder him from feeding
the starving and reclaiming the criminals of the
present day, because in the next generation a
normal state of capital and labour might provide
employment. If others were forbidden by faith
and conscience to co-operate in his work, they
could bid God-speed to all who, in good faith,
were toiling for at least the temporal good of out
cast people.1

Thus, in the last year of his life, the Cardinal
welcomed the labourers in another part of God's
vineyard. Some men are ever, consciously or
unconsciously, seeking grounds and reasons for
tracing a dividing line. His search was in an
opposite direction. * It is to me a consolation,'
he wrote to Dr. Dawson Burns at a time of
personal loss, 'when I can find such a union in

1 ' Darkest England.' Paternoster Review, 1891.

THE CAUSE OF THE WORTHLESS 173

the midst of our sad disunion. Our Master would
be better pleased and better served if we better
knew each other.'

Between him and men like General Booth there
was one great bond — both were seeking the lost.
To both the old Latin saying quoted by the
Cardinal might be applied, ' I am a man, and
nothing human is alien to me.' Other phil
anthropists might honestly limit their mission to
men and women not so utterly sunk in the mire
and slough of sin and misery as to be in their eyes
irredeemable. To the old priest at Westminster,
as to the founder of the Salvation Army, no single
human being was beyond the reach of possible
succour.

In a paper belonging to the year 1888, he set
himself to plead the cause of the 'worthless,'
pointing out, as their advocate, the reasons
to which their condition should be ascribed.
Those reasons he considered to be three: the
destruction of domestic life through the scandalous
housing of the poor ; the drink trade ; the absence
of a moral law and — in masses of the population
— of the knowledge of God. From these causes
resulted personal demoralisation, as well as what
appeared to some people the greater enormities
of imposture and idleness. These three causes

174 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

were the direct results of the apathy or selfishness
of society ; of legislation or neglect to legislate ;
or of laws inefficiently administered. The pauper
habit of mind was formed by overmuch poverty,
helplessness, hopelessness, and loss of self-respect ;
the temptation to gain unlawfully food denied,
save on odious conditions, followed ; and the
sight of the abundance enjoyed by those who
never laboured produced the sense of injustice,
and — man being human — a sting of resentment.
The ostentation of luxury was a sharp temptation
to despairing men, even when honest and upright.
The moral nature gave way in the desperation
of want ; crime and vice were the result Yet
forgers and prostitutes had once been as far from
their fall as those who moralised over them,
fallen. And if this were true of all men, how
much more true of the worthless. If they were
worthless, it was because they had been wrecked
by society, and what was society doing to redeem
them ? None were beyond hope. Goodness over
came evil ; kindness broke the hardest hearts ;
sympathy, care, service, were powers that never
failed. The memory of childhood was not dead.
If it remained only as a gleam of innocence long
past, it was also a throb of a higher life not yet
extinct for ever.

IRRESPONSIBLE WEALTH 175

Such was, in brief, the Cardinal's plea for the
pariahs of the world ; and he held out the right
hand of fellowship to all who were labouring to
reclaim them. There was work enough, and to
spare, for all. Whilst eager, so far as he was
able, to promote legislation which might tend to
better the condition of the poor, he relied for
amelioration chiefly upon personal ministry. In
a paper upon ' Irresponsible Wealth ' he applied
to the present relations of capital and labour
the parable of the vineyard — 'the plea and
gospel of capital.' In that parable capital made
free contracts; labour accepted it without com
plaint. When evening came labour murmured,
not because it was underpaid, but because some
one was overpaid. Capital answered, ' Is it not
lawful for me to do what I will with my own ? '
Capital was in its rights ; the men in the wrong.
But when did any capitalist in our day give a
day's wages for one hour's work ? Measuring by
the long day of disappointed waiting, the craving
of nature and perhaps the hungry mouths at
home, the lord of the vineyard was more than
just ; he was generous : and if the parable is a
warning against the murmuring of labour, it is
also a warning against the despotic avarice of
capital. Widespread unrest prevailed; the people

176 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

were sore and discontented, capitalists alarmed ;
capital and labour were forming combinations
against each other. Where lay the remedy?
Not in legislation ; not in political economy ; not
in the present administration of the Poor Law;
but in the law that created the Christian world —
personal sacrifice, the chanty of humanity, and
self-denial.

After this manner, through the public press,
the Cardinal urged in later years their duties
upon those whom only in that fashion his voice
could reach. It was perhaps little wonder if those
who read or listened classed, by a confusion of
terms, the democrat as the socialist. Yet he
was careful to distinguish between the views he
held and the socialistic programme. Those who
called him socialist were, he explicitly stated,
wrong. He was in favour of social organisation,
not of socialism ; and between the terms social
and socialism the difference was as great as
between reason and rationalism. Socialism, in
his opinion, tended to the destruction of existing
society and was the result of an individualism
destructive of the family. Social organisation,
on the contrary, rested upon the sense of re
ciprocal duties, the unity of the human race,
and the benefits of union. Christianity being

LATER WRITINGS 177

essentially an organiser, was incompatible with
socialism.1 «

Socialism is in fact a term loosely employed
by a world with no leisure to cultivate accuracy ;
and it is not likely that the Cardinal's explana
tion was satisfactory to those who had seen in
his utterances cause for complaint.

1 Conversation reported in the Figaro.

M

CHAPTER XII

The Knights of Labour — Cardinal Manning's Interposition
— Labour Questions in England — ' The Law of Nature '
— Manning's Influence at the Vatican — Interest in
French Affairs— Leo Xlil.'s Encyclical on Labour.

CARDINAL MANNING'S interest in social questions
was not limited to England. It will be seen that
he was in warm sympathy with the movement in
France represented by the Cercle Catholique
d'Ouvriers, and in 1887 — the year of the Trafalgar
Square riots — the weight of his influence as a
peace-maker was felt on the other side of the
Atlantic. A crisis dangerous to the Catholic
Church in America had arisen in the United
States, the association of the Knights of Labour,
a body including a vast number of members,
having fallen under suspicion at Rome, and being
threatened with excommunication. The matter
had indeed gone so far that the Canadian members
of the society had already incurred the condemna
tion of the local ecclesiastical authorities, and had
been deprived of the sacraments.

The situation was serious. Well-meaning men

178

KNIGHTS OF LABOUR 179

were alarmed ; a change in the social structure
appeared imminent ; labour seemed in a position
to dictate terms to capital ; and a profound uneasi
ness, not altogether without justification, prevailed
amongst timid people. Thus Cardinal Gibbons,
whose sympathies were no less strongly enlisted
on the side of the working classes than those of
Manning himself, afterwards summed up the situa
tion at the moment when pressure had been
brought to induce the Pope to take stringent
measures with regard to the great labour organi
sation.

What the results of that step would have been
remains untested. When the policy of the Vatican
was still trembling in the balances, the man whose
life-work and vocation, according to Gibbons, was
that of a mediator, 'standing between need and
greed with hands of entreaty/ interposed to sup
port his brother Cardinal in his vindication and
defence of the body attacked, ' defendit/ to quote
another writer, 'avec son flegme passione, sa
serenite concentree et agissante,' the cause of the
working man, and carried the day.

The manner of his intervention was marked by
his usual whole-hearted zeal, whilst he used the
opportunity to renew the ardent profession of his
political faith.

i8o THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

' I have read with great assent/ he wrote to a
member of the American episcopate, 'Cardinal
Gibbons' document in relation to the Knights of
Labour. The Holy See will, I am sure, be con
vinced by his exposition of the state of the New
World. I hope it will open a new field of thought
and action. It passes my understanding that
officious persons should be listened to rather than
official. . . . Hitherto the world has been governed
by dynasties ; henceforth the Holy See will have
to deal with the people ; and it has bishops in
daily and personal contact with the people. The
more clearly and fully this is perceived, the stronger
Rome will be. ... Failure to see and use these
powers will breed much trouble and mischief.
My thanks are due to the Cardinal for letting me
share in his arguments. If I can find a copy of
my lecture on the Duties and Rights of Labour I
will send it to him. It will, I think, qualify me
for knighthood in the order. . . . The Church is
the mother, fiiend, and protector of the people.
As the Lord walked among them, so His Church
lives among them.'

That the threatened blow was averted has been
ascribed, if to Cardinal Gibbons' advocacy in part,
not a little to the co-operation of his English
colleague.

DISTRESS IN LONDON 181

During the winter following upon his interposi
tion in the American dispute, Cardinal Manning's
attention was claimed by matters nearer home.
Distress was severely felt among the London
poor ; and he was as usual foremost in taking part
in the efforts made to relieve it, occupying a place
on Lord Compton's Committee, appointed to deal
with the subject, and forming one of a deputation
from that Committee to Lord Salisbury, designed
to press upon the Government the necessity of
measures of present relief and of permanent
remedies which, so far as was possible, should
prevent the recurrence of a like crisis.

The principle he consistently laid down — of the
right of every man to * work or bread ' — would seem
to be one that none need shrink from avowing,
but his open declaration of his convictions on this
point, as on others, was made the subject of un
sparing criticism from those who discerned in it a
socialistic tendency. The Times, in particular —
attributing to him a suggestion he had never
made, and which he at once repudiated — referred
to his ( wild proposition ' that the deserving unem
ployed should be provided with work at the current
rate of wages.

In the case of the Times, criticism was possibly
embittered by the fact that, in the speech made as

182 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

one of the deputation to the Prime Minister, the
Cardinal had stigmatized certain proposals printed
in that newspaper for dealing with the question of
the unemployed, as not only heartless but head
less ; and the attacks made upon him in its
columns drew forth from him two letters in vindi
cation and explanation of his views. During the
previous year, he said, the Times had observed, in
treating of some words of his on the same subject,
that he had taken refuge in confusion of thought
— a rebuke he had received with becoming meek
ness and silence. On the present occasion he
thought fit to reply. If he had impeached the
working of the Poor Law, he had been careful to
lay the responsibility of its failure upon the ad
ministration of the law and not upon the guardians.
That administration he declared to depend partly
upon the tradition of the Local Government Board,
partly upon public opinion, partly upon the spirit
of a narrow so-called political economy which
cramped the hearts of administrators and warped
the administration of the law. He also expressed
his conviction that the criminal class in London
was produced by desperation. Having once, in
the absence of work or bread, violated the law, a
man fell thereby into the habit of violating it.
Poverty, destitution, desperation, refusal of sym-

'THE LAW OF NATURE' 183

pathy, caused a man, driven almost beyond self-
control, to yield to temptation and to become a
criminal.

It was perhaps not unnatural that some of
those who, like the Tablet, considered that 'if
Dives represented the one extreme, the Devil
represented the other,' should have viewed parts
of the Cardinal's speech with disfavour ; and
besides his reply to his anonymous assailant in
the Times, he thought it well to state his position
with clearness and precision in an article contri
buted to the American Catholic Quarterly, under
the title of ' The Law of Nature Divine and
Supreme.'

Reiterating in plain terms the right of the poor
to sustenance, no less than the obligation of
others to support them when necessary, he ex
plained the origin of the dispute in which he had
been involved. The Poor Law had been attacked
— it will be remembered that it was with the
administration and not with the law that he had
found fault — and it was in defending it that he
had made the declaration that had given so
much offence. He had affirmed that its founda
tion was the natural right of the poor to ' work
or bread.' The next morning the Times had
rebuked him for countenancing this 'popular

1 84 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

fallacy.' To call it a fallacy was to call it a
falsehood, and from the imputation of having
been guilty of a falsehood the Cardinal proceeded
to defend himself in language little more calcul
ated to propitiate his assailants than the utterance
by which the attack had been called forth.

Natural law, he contended, was supreme over
all positive law. So strict was the natural right
of every man to life, and to the food necessary
for the sustenance of life, that it prevailed over
all positive laws of property. Necessity had no
law, and a starving man had a natural right to
his neighbour's bread. Before the natural right
to live, all human laws must give way. ' I have
committed lese majesty he added, 'by rudely
reminding some who rule over public opinion in
London of the fresh mother earth and the
primaeval laws which protect her offspring. I
was unconscious of my audacity. I thought I
was uttering truisms which all educated men
knew and believed. But I found that these
primary truths of human life were forgotten, that
on this forgetfulness a theory and a treatment of
our poor had formed a system of thought and
action which hardens the heart of the rich and
"grinds the faces of the poor." I am glad,
therefore, that I said and wrote what is before

THE CARDINAL AND THE VATICAN 185

the public, even though for a time some men
have called me a socialist and a revolutionist,
and have fastened upon a subordinate conse
quence and neglected the substance of my con
tention in behalf of the natural rights of the
poor.'

The part played by Cardinal Manning in
solving the American difficulty leads up to the
question of the measure and extent of his influence
in such matters at the Vatican. In the absence
of direct and specific evidence it is impossible to
determine the question with certainty, but there
are not wanting those who trace in the line
adopted by Leo xin. towards social problems the
influence of the English Cardinal.

In spite of his extreme love and veneration for
Pius IX., the later years of his Pontificate,
viewed in their political aspect, and following
in sorrowful sequence upon the brilliant promise
of its opening, can scarcely have been regarded
by Cardinal Manning as conducive to the further
ance of the work he had at heart, in the con
ciliation of the love and trust of the demo
cracy. But if he had lamented, he had lamented
in silence ; or had confined his remonstrances to
special lines of policy — such as that pursued in

1 86 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Italian affairs — which he might have hoped to
modify. He was a Lamennais, says the same
French writer quoted before 1 — who, though anony
mous, may be taken as representing a certain
body of opinion — in the hierarchical and orthodox
frame. Lamennais was impatient and exagger
ated; Cardinal Manning, a diplomaitst and a
peace-maker, recognised the limits of boldness,
and the conditions of the evolutions he held
to be necessary. At his death he had seen all
his ideas afoot, living, luminous, irresistible. The
evolution was on the eve of being an accom
plished fact. The great modern Pope sym
pathised with the great democratic Bishop. The
world had been Romanised ; Rome ought now to
be universalised, and perhaps, more than any
other man, Cardinal Manning understood the
situation. The cordiality of his relations with
Leo XIII. was never interrupted. Cardinal Simeoni
might complain of his activity, and say of him,
Scrive troppo, but the Pope constantly sought his
advice, and it was he who determined his move
ment towards democracy.2

That he would have laboured towards that end
is certain. To bring home to the minds of the
poor, the unhappy, the oppressed, the fact that

5. ^Nouvelle Revite, 1892.

VISIT OF THE ABBE LEMIRE 187

the Church of Christ was their natural protector
and friend he counted no toil too great. His
sympathies were at the service of all who were
working in that direction, in England or abroad.
In the account of a conversation with him pub
lished by the Abbe Lemire l — a visitor with two
friends, at Archbishop's House in the autumn of
1888 — the eagerness with which he entered into
the subject of France and her difficulties is de
scribed. What she most wanted was, in his
opinion, liberty, and above all liberty of associa
tion. The Revolution had destroyed private initi
ative. Centralisation was death. Paris dominated
France ; her people had become used to that
tyranny and awaited orders before taking action.
Let them not be constantly asking for directions
from the Government, but act for themselves.

As to the French Church, he was ever an
advocate of its disestablishment, and he expressed
his opinion frankly to his French visitors, two of
whom were priests. To be paid was to lose
prestige. Liberty, it was true, was poverty ; but
it was likewise public consideration, dignity and
strength. A government made no account of
those it paid — it knew it was difficult for men
who received money to impose conditions.

1 Le Cardinal Manning et son Action Sociale.

1 88 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

As the visit was about to conclude, the Cardinal's
attention strayed to a boy of nine or ten who
had accompanied his guests, and whose eyes were
wandering to the portraits on the walls.

' Is that child to be a priest ? ' he asked, turning
abruptly and characteristically from the considera
tion of abstract principles and national questions
to the thought of his little visitor's future.

' As God wills/ was the answer of the father ;
and with the Cardinal's blessing the interview
ended.

A letter to M. Harmel, the apostle of the
Usine Chr£tienne> reiterated, in 1890, in emphatic
language, his convictions as to the need of
conditions of labour which should render life
human and domestic, as in great industrial centres
was not possible at present. For that end three
things were vitally necessary — faith in God and
obedience to His laws ; cordiality of relationship
between employers and employed ; and a true
correspondence between profits and wages.

Some months later, in acknowledging a number
of the xxieme Sie'cle, he was no less explicit in
defining his own attitude towards the problems
of the day and the exaggerated individualism he
held to be responsible for what he deplored. The
coming century would show that human society

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 189

was greater and nobler than what was merely
individual ; although this doctrine, based on the
law of nature and Christianity, was charged with
socialism. It would be seen in the future, by the
light of reason, what was the social condition of
the world of labour, and upon what laws the
Christian society of humanity rested. Politicians
and political economists had had their day. The
twentieth century would belong to the people and
to the laws of common prosperity under Christian
government.

'The twentieth century would belong to the
people.' There are men who recognise the fact
and deplore it; who, admitting that the future
must be dominated by the democracy, and that
therefore terms must be made with it, bow
to the necessity reluctantly, grudgingly, ever
casting backward glances at a condition of things
in greater conformity with their sense of fitness and
right. Such was not Cardinal Manning's stand
point. To a future under the suzerainty of the
peoples he looked forward with a glad and
generous faith. That the old order should pass
away was in accordance with the working of
natural laws. To deny the justice of those laws
would be to impugn the moral government of the
world.

190 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

It was, however, inevitable that the militant
tone of his letter, together with the doctrines
enunciated, should have given fresh offence.
f My letter to the xxieme Siecle has caused
irritation in England,' he wrote to the Comte
de Mun, connected as leader with the Associa
tion Catholique, ' I, like you, am charged with
socialism. But here socialism is little studied
— it is a party cry.' In the same letter he
reiterated his sanguine anticipations of what the
future would bring forth. 'The coming century
will belong neither to the capitalists, nor to the
bourgeoisie, but to the people. . . . If we win their
confidence, we can counsel them. If we oppose
them blindly, all good may be destroyed. I hope
much from the action of the Church, whom all
governments despoil and reject. Her true home
is with the people. It hears her voice.'

Religion, in fact — so Canon William Barry sums
up the matter — must be made the heart of
democracy, democracy the hands of religion.1 To
effect that object was one of the main aims of the
Cardinal's later years ; and before his death the
Encyclical dealing with the conditions of labour,
put forth by Leo XIIL, was to him a supreme cause
of joy and thanksgiving. Promulgated some

1 Dublin Review, April 1908. ' Rome and Democracy.'

THE ENCYCLICAL ON LABOUR 191

eighteen months after Cardinal Manning's letter
to the Comte de Mun had been written, the tone
assumed by the Pope was in full accord with his
most ardent aspirations, and the step was in his
eyes full of promise for the future. How far his
own influence was directly responsible for the pro
nouncement must again remain uncertain ; but
passages contained in it go far to support the
contention of those who believed they detected
his hand in its composition.

' There is a dictate of nature/ wrote Leo XIII.,
' more imperious and more ancient than any
bargain between man and man, that the remunera
tion of the wage-earner must be sufficient to
support him in reasonable and frugal comfort.'
Strikes were recognised as a lawful means of
exercising restraint upon employers ; unions and
co-operation amongst workmen were approved,
the phrase c freedom of contract ' was made
provisional. It was true that many of the
principles laid down were of the nature of those
truisms conceived by the Cardinal to be accepted
by all educated men. But truisms acquire fresh
force when enunciated by a Pope ; and those who
were struggling to obtain for the poor their just
rights may well have drawn encouragement from
the utterance. It was welcomed as a step in the

IQ2 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

right direction even by some from whom it seemed
to dissent, and though certain passages appeared
to be aimed against the teaching of Henry George,
the American reformer maintained that they were
based upon a misapprehension of his doctrines due
to misrepresentation ; and he expressed in an open
letter to the Pope his conviction that in the
Encyclical all his postulates were stated or
implied. The beliefs in question being the
primary perceptions of human reason, as well as
the fundamental teaching of the Christian Church,
Mr. George declared that, so far from shunning
the judgment of religion — that tribunal of which
the Pope was the most august representative — he
earnestly sought it ; ending with an impassioned
appeal to Pope Leo to carry on the work that had
been begun.

' Servant of the servants of God/ he concluded,
. . . ' in your hands, more than in those of any
living man, lies the power to say the word and
make the sign that shall end an unnatural divorce,
and marry again to religion all that is pure and
high in social aspiration/

If by reformers outside the Church the En
cyclical was thus warmly welcomed, to Cardinal
Manning, put forth only a few months before his
death, and when his practical work was finished, it

THE ENCYCLICAL ON LABOUR 193

came more especially to endorse and bless his
teaching on social questions : with the Pope's
words sounding in his ears he could sing his
Nunc Dimittis. In a paper dealing with the
utterance he made, in his own phrase, his political
testament as to matters social, repeating for the
last time the convictions which, the result of a life
time, had strengthened with time and experience.
* L'injustice et la misere sociale,' wrote M.
Brunetiere, M'ont lui-meme emu d'une pitie plus
profonde d mesure qu'il devenait en quelque sorte
plus catholique, et s'il a merite" d'etre appele par
ses compatriotes le Cardinal des Ouvriers il le
doit au progres de son detachement de soi-meme.'
Though all might not concur in the wording of
the statement, it may be admitted by everyone
that a voluntary sacrifice of selfish interests,
a progressive detachment from the world and
the things of the world, as well as from class
prejudice, is a means of acquiring an increased
power of sympathetic comprehension of the
condition of men to whom privation is no matter
of choice ; who tread of necessity the hard and
steep path of renunciation, and who are the
disinherited of the nations.

In the Cardinal's formal commentary upon the
Encyclical he hailed it as a voice pleading for the

N

194 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

people as no other Pontiff had pleaded before.
None other had had the opportunity offered to
Leo XIII., who, looking out of the watch-tower of
the Christian world, had before him what no
other Pontiff had seen — the kingdoms of the
world and the suffering of them. The moan of
discontent and sorrow and toil went up. The
modern world had become confluent. With
facilitated means of intercommunication, toilers
and workers were united by one living conscious
ness. The world of to-day was a world of
enormous wealth and endless labour ; the heart of
the Pope was with the poor — he had compassion
on the multitude. And the Cardinal thanked
God.

CHAPTER XIII
The Dockers' Strike.

IT was during the year 1889, nearly two years
before the issue of the Encyclical, that the episode
occurred which, more than any other, afforded
evidence of the place won by the people's Cardinal,
and the work he had done.

For close upon twenty-five years he had laboured
unweariedly for the welfare of his poorer country
men, men, women and children, to whatever de
nomination they might belong. He had found
the condition of public feeling and the strength of
traditional prejudice such that prominent members
of the established Church and of dissenting bodies
alike would have shrunk from appearing upon a
platform at the side of a Catholic dignitary.
Gradually and patiently he had effected a change,
until men of all opinions, religious, non-religious,
and anti-religious, were glad to welcome him as a
fellow-worker. But above all, and immeasurably
more important, he had made the working men of
London feel that in the Cardinal Archbishop they
could confidently count upon a friend at need.

195

196 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

For their sake he had braved denunciation as
socialist and communist, had faced the disapproval
of friends as well as of opponents, and had never
striven to disguise opinions courting and inviting
condemnation. Whether his views had been
put forward in writing or in speech it had ever
been done openly. From the first he had deter
mined against anonymous intervention in current
affairs. ' Whenever I have been compelled to put
no name to any writing, as in newspapers/ he said,
' I have always let it be known that I was the writer.'
His great work had been carried on gradually ;
men had become accustomed to his intervention
in public affairs, to his presence on Royal Com
missions, to his association with all bodies engaged
in social reform ; but the scope and extent of what
had been accomplished was probably unsuspected
by those who had not either shared or followed
closely the details of the Cardinal's labours. It
was the history of the Dockers' Strike which en
lightened the world as to the position he held.
Belonging to the last epoch of his life, the affair
fitly summed up the achievements of the years he
had ruled at Westminster.1

1 For the history of the strike I am mainly indebted to the
account of it given by Mr. Llewellyn Smith and Mr. Vaughan
Nash, to Mr. Sydney Buxton's contribution to Archbishop
Temple's Life, and to the accounts in the Times.

BEGINNING OF THE STRIKE 197

The great strike had its beginnings — small be
ginnings showing little cause for uneasiness or
excitement — in the middle of August 1889. A
month later it had run its course, had enlisted the
mass of public opinion on its side, had received
the generous financial support of Australia, without
which the struggle could scarcely have been brought
to a successful end ; and had won what it demanded,
without bloodshed and without disorder ; though
at the cost of how much suffering to the men who
took part in it, their wives and their children, of
how much anxiety, fear and misgiving to those
seeking to guide and stem and control the great
force set loose, none can tell.

On August 29th, the strike had already lasted
a fortnight, and neither party showed signs of
surrender. The demands of the men had been
formulated; they had been refused. Money had
not yet begun to come in from without to any
appreciable degree, and hunger and destitution
were staring the strikers in the face. The situation,
too, was not without other disquieting features for
those who looked on.

' Disorder and horse-play,' said the Cardinal
afterwards, ' which at any moment might turn to
collisions with the people or the police, were
imminent. ... At any moment a drunkard, or a

198 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

madman, or a fool, might have set fire to the
docks and warehouses. The commercial wealth
of London, and the merchandise of the world, the
banks and wharves of the Thames, might have
been pillaged and the conflagration might have
spread for hours before order, at unimaginable
loss, could be restored. And all this/ pursued
the Cardinal, ' because a strike is " a matter be
tween us and our men." '

The Directors were to be reminded that two
other parties besides masters and men, employers
and employed, were interested in the struggle —
namely, the multitude of suffering women and
children, and the whole peaceful population of
London.

Before this wholesome consideration had been
forced upon their attention, a desperate step had
been proposed. This was no less than the issue
of an appeal to all the trades of the metropolis to
join in a general strike. It would have been a
policy, if not of despair, of something approaching
to it. Already the skilled labour of the docks and
the riverside industries, with nothing to gain by
their loyalty, had determined to throw in their lot
with the dockers, and to support them in their
demands. It was now decided to attempt to
move the entire trade of London to take up a

THE NO-WORK MANIFESTO 199

similar attitude, and on the night of Thursday,
August 2pth, a no-work manifesto was drawn up
by the leaders of the strike, calling upon all fellow-
workmen to desist from work on the following
Monday.

The proximate cause of the step had been an
offer from the joint Committee of Directors, sitting
in Dock House, Leadenhall Street, which, wearing
the guise of concession, practically left many of
the men's grievances untouched. At Wade's Arms,
Poplar, where the daily meetings of the executive
of the strike were held, the disappointment had
been bitter, expressing itself in this appeal for
assistance from their comrades.

The wisdom of the measure was more than
doubtful. It was calculated, in the first place, to
alarm the general public, and to alienate the
sympathy hitherto shown. It was also uncertain
in the extreme whether the response made would
be sufficient to counterbalance the damage thereby
inflicted upon the cause. Friendly as the Trades
Unions were to the men on strike, the demand
was one to tax their disinterestedness to the
utmost. Would it stand the strain ? The question
is fortunately left without an answer.

On the Friday following the issue of the no-
work manifesto, and when two days still remained

200 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

before it would come into active operation, Cardinal
Manning made his first effort to act as mediator
between the belligerents. In an interview with
the Directors he urged upon them reconsideration
of their position, pointed to the chances of riot and
bloodshed, and warned them plainly, that in case
of disorder, they would be charged by the public
with the responsibility.

His protest, as might have been expected, was
fruitless. It was not likely that, at the present
stage of the struggle, the Directors — so far masters
of the situation — would have consented to listen
to the counsels and warnings of one they naturally
regarded as an intermeddler in matters with which
he had no concern. The step taken by the men
on the previous night, if not a blunder, had been
at the least a confession of their desperate condi
tion, and was no incentive to the employers to give
way. In his reply to the Cardinal, the spokesman
of the Joint Committee reasserted their right to
buy labour at the cheapest rate at which it could
be obtained. It remained to be proved what that
rate was.

On the very day that the unpopular manifesto
had been made public, the outlook had changed.
It had become known that Australia was coming
to the rescue, and the first instalments of the

THE CARDINAL'S INTERVENTION 201

money afterwards contributed with lavish gener
osity had been received. It was rendered possible,
though not easy, to wait, and on the Saturday the
appeal to the Trades was withdrawn before it had
had time to take practical effect.

The days went on, and as the struggle showed
no signs of terminating, Cardinal Manning, like
others, waited and watched ; haunted by the fear
that some irresponsible agitator might stir up the
passions of the men ; and that the order hitherto
maintained by their leaders — Burns, Tillett, Cham
pion and the rest — might be followed by riot
and bloodshed. The possibility might well be a
terror to those who had the men's interests at
heart.

On September 5, a summons to more active
intervention reached the Cardinal, in the shape of
a message from the leaders of the strike to the
effect that the coal-heavers, who, after throwing in
their lot with the Dock labourers had returned to
work, were again prepared to join the strike in
case the Directors refused to come to terms. The
menace was a serious one. Had the coal supply
failed, railroads and gas-works would have been
affected ; and the Cardinal, with full appreciation
of the threatening crisis, set to work without delay
to avert it.

202 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

When the strike was a thing of the past, Mr.
Boulton, Chairman of the London Board of Con
ciliation, established to meet similar difficulties,
in discussing the affair with the Cardinal, frankly
stated his opinion that, though a debt of profound
gratitude was due to him for having brought it
to a conclusion, yet that the arbitration of an
individual was not a safe or normal method of
settling labour disputes. He was undoubtedly
right, and the Cardinal, after a short pause,
expressed his concurrence in the view. It was
not, he agreed, part of the business of a prelate to
fix rates of wages. But he offered a sufficient
apology, if apology were needed, for his inter
ference. Things had gone from bad to worse.
He had received information making him certain
that renewed efforts would be made to bring
labourers from a distance — that the attempt
would be met with resistance, and bloodshed
would be the probable result. Finding that no
other mediator acceptable to the opposed parties
was available, he offered his services. Such was
the explanation he gave of the motives which had
caused his intervention.

No time was to be lost, and his first visit was
paid to the Home Office, finding both Secretary
and Under-Secretary absent from London. He

THE CONCILIATION COMMITTEE 203

next proceeded to the Mansion House, where,
though the Lord Mayor was in Scotland, he had
an interview with his deputy, Sir Andrew Lusk,
as well as with the second in command of the
London police. On the following day, Friday,
September 6th, Sir Andrew accompanied the
Cardinal to the Dock House, and a visit was
paid to the Directors. ' They received us very
courteously,' recorded the Cardinal, ' but nothing
came of it.'

By this time, if not before, the world at large
had awakened to the importance of what was
going forward. The Lord Mayor had returned
to his post, and with the Bishop of London, come
from Wales, was prepared to co-operate with the
mediators already in the field, including Mr.
Sydney Buxton — who, as member for Poplar, had
been strenuously engaged in the work of relief —
Lord Brassey, and Sir John Lubbock, Chairman
of the London Chamber of Commerce. By some
of these men, the Cardinal amongst them, an
appeal to the shareholders was contemplated as
a last resource, should their representatives prove
obdurate. It was to be seen whether that step
would be necessary.

On Friday the Conciliation Committee met at
the Mansion House Burns and Tillett, summoned

204 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

thither by telegram. Upon the substantial justice
of the men's demands the Committee were agreed;
but it was considered that an interval of time
should be granted to the Directors before the
increase of wages insisted upon should come into
operation. The length of that interval was the
principal point under discussion. March i had
been the date adopted by a majority of the
Committee; but Burns and Tillett, called into
consultation, protested against so long a post
ponement, and declared their belief that any such
proposal would be rejected by the men.

1 1 appeal to your Eminence,' added Burns,
and to you, my Lord Bishop, and to Mr. Buxton,
whether the men in this strike have not behaved
with " sweet reasonableness ? "

It was the Cardinal who answered, with an
emphatic assent.

' My son, they have,' he said.

In that case, returned Burns, he thought they
should not be asked to await till March the increase
in their wages.

In the end a compromise was agreed upon.
Terms were drawn up for the consideration of
the Directors, including a rise in pay of a penny
an hour, to come into force on January 1st.
Should the Companies be willing to make this

NEGOTIATIONS 205

concession, it was understood that the two leaders
present — Champion and Mann had not received
their summons in time to appear — would advise
the men on strike to accept it. Their power
extended no further.

That evening, accordingly, at six o'clock, the
Lord Mayor, the Cardinal, and the Bishop of
London, waited upon the Dock Directors. The
Lord Mayor acquainted the Committee with the
fact that supplies were pouring in upon him from
Australia. He furthermore hinted at a Mansion
House fund. It was made clear, had there pre
viously been any doubt on the subject, that the
strikers, should reasonable demands on their
behalf be rejected, would not be permitted to
fight their battle unsupported. The Cardinal, for
his part, reiterated the warning he had already
given, and pointed to the possibilities of disorder
and bloodshed.

No definite answer was obtained that evening,
but Mr. Norwood, representing the Directors,
promised that the suggested compromise should
receive consideration on the following day. On
Saturday the four most prominent members of
the Conciliation Committee — the Lord Mayor, the
Cardinal, the Bishop and Mr. Buxton — waiting
anxiously at the Mansion House, with Tillett and

206 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Burns, received, at four in the afternoon, the reply
of the Directors. It proved to be, on the face of
it at least, a surrender.

Not without deprecation of the principle of
interference from without, characterised by the
Directors as ' a very dangerous departure in dis
putes between employers and workmen, and one
that may have very far-reaching consequences in
the future,' they admitted that the circumstances
were so altered by the weight of the influence
thrown by the members of the Conciliation Com
mittee into the scales and by their representations
— doubtless too by the weight of the unexpected
Australian gold — that they were prepared to
agree, under certain conditions, to the terms
proposed. One of those conditions was that the
labourers should signify through the Lord Mayor,
the Cardinal, and the Bishop, the acceptance of
the arrangement that very evening.

Such was the answer addressed to the four
principal mediators. Such was the offer pro
visionally accepted by Burns and Tillett. Worn
out and overstrained, they were for once not
disposed to assume a critical attitude. The
proposal came through men they trusted ; over
looking the significance of the proviso that the
answer was to be returned that night, they gave

COLLAPSE OF NEGOTIATIONS 207

an incautious welcome to the possibility of peace ;
and, though not pledging the men, hastened away
to place the offer before the Strike Committee
sitting at Wade's Arms.

At the Mansion House the mediators remained
anxiously awaiting the result. At ten o'clock no
answer had come, save a silence which boded ill
for success and would leave the Directors a way
of retreat from the concessions wrung from them.
Between ten and eleven a reply was brought, to
the effect that no decision could be arrived at
that night.

'The next morning, Sunday,' — such are the
Cardinal's words — ' appeared a manifesto repudi
ating terms, negotiations and negotiators.' With
what bitterness of disappointment he learnt that
morning's tidings may be guessed.

What had happened has been variously repre
sented, according to the bias and sympathies of
the narrator, and by some Burns and Tillett have
been freely charged with bad faith. That a grave
blunder had been committed is certain, though it
is less easy to place the responsibility for it, and
the Directors were at length provided with a
genuine grievance. The truth seems to be that
the offer had been from the first quite inadequate
to meet the situation, and that to accept it would

208 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

have been in large measure to forfeit the fruits of
the strike. This fact, strangely misapprehended
by the two leaders who had viewed it in some sort
through the more unpractised eyes of the Mansion
House mediators, was at once patent to the col
leagues to whom it was submitted. The post
ponement of the rise of wages for three months —
by which time the year's press of work would be
over — was practically to postpone the benefit to
be derived from it till the slack season following
upon Christmas should be past. The money was
imperatively needed and at once — on this point
all were agreed, including, after discussion, Burns
and Tillett themselves. Another, and not a less
important fact, was certain. The men on strike
would not endorse any acceptance of the proffered
terms. They were accordingly unanimously re
jected, and a manifesto was drawn up to deny the
report current in the streets that the strike was at
an end.

It was in this condition of things that the usual
Sunday meeting was held in Hyde Park. By all
the situation was considered critical. It is notori
ously difficult to maintain enthusiasm on the part
of a mass of men at a high point for any consider
able period. Where it is necessarily accompanied
by privation, strain, and effort, the difficulty is

POSSIBLE FAILURE 209

incalculably enhanced. Financial assistance was
still coming in, but there was a danger that the
moral support drawn from the sense that the
public opinion of England was, on the whole, on
the side of the strike, would be forfeited. Sym:
pathy had been lessened or alienated by the events
of the previous day — due, in Mr. Sydney Buxton's
opinion, to mutual misunderstanding — and, dis
heartened and weary of the protracted struggle,
a portion of the men were inclined to surrender.
Failure, after all that had been done, was more
than possible, and failure meant the wasting of
weeks of incessant toil and hardship.

The day was a hot autumn one. The usual
procession to Hyde Park — described by a spec
tator — was attended by dwindling numbers. The
men were tired and dispirited, public interest was
on the wane. As a halt was made at Westminster,
a thick haze hung about, obscuring the distance
in which the long line of banners and men was
lost.

The Park reached, the leaders did their best to
re-animate the drooping spirits of the men. Let
them hold together, urged Burns, as they had held
together so far in spite of starving wives and
children. He did not minimize the stress of the

situation ; they were in a worse case than soldiers

O

210 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

on the field of battle. Soldiers had death behind
them and victory in front. The Dockers had
worse than death behind — the living death wives
and children had suffered for generations.

Champion also spoke, enforcing the mainte
nance of order, and pointing onwards to the boast
it would be in the power of Englishmen to make,
when the cause had been won without bloodshed
or great waste of wealth. Turning to the question
of the negotiations, he said they had been begun
by Cardinal Manning, respected by all ; who had
told himself and Burns that his anxiety to see the
strike ended was not alone in the interest of the
40,000 Roman Catholics joining in it, but in the
interest of the other men for whom he had no less
regard.

The meeting over, Tillett repaired to Arch
bishop's House, to make the formal announcement
that the suggested compromise was declined ;
the Cardinal not disguising the fact that he felt
that he had been placed in a false position, and
negativing the suggestion of a march past his
house.

The result of the failure was immediately ap
parent. The altered position in public estima
tion of the leaders who were considered to have
been false to their pledge was indicated by the

RENEWED EFFORTS 211

withdrawal of the Bishop of London from any
participation in future negotiations.1 The Lord
Mayor was irritated ; but Cardinal Manning, with
inexhaustible patience, summoned the leaders to
a fresh conference in the afternoon, and in the
end the Lord Mayor was likewise induced to
continue his good offices, the Cardinal remaining
the only ecclesiastic on the Conciliation Com
mittee. ' I am not sure,' he said afterwards with
a smile, 'whether any others of my episcopal
brethren were in England at the time.'

The mediators had undoubtedly cause for serious
annoyance at the scant ceremony or even courtesy

1 Canon Mason, in a contribution to the ' Memoirs of Archbishop
Temple' (vol. ii. p. 148), gives a curiously erroneous account of
the affair, so far as the Bishop's action in it was concerned. ' As
soon,' he says, ' as the main lines of the settlement were made, the
Bishop returned to his holiday. It is, I dare say, true that the
strikers themselves had won the main part of their cause before the
ecclesiastics intervened ; but the intervention at any rate brought
about peace more quickly than it would otherwise have come — and
especially the intervention of the Bishop of London. If the Bishop
had not come, the Lord Mayor would not have come ; and if the Lord
Mayor had not come, I much doubt whether Manning's somewhat
one-sided interposition might not even have delayed matters.' If
it is fair to add that Canon Mason was writing from abroad, and
without notes to guide him with regard to dates, the Editor of
Archbishop Temple's Memoirs might have been expected to have
corrected his mis-statements before allowing them to appear in
print. An entry in Archbishop Benson's diary is marked by a
more generous spirit. ' Cardinal Manning has done well for
London,' he wrote on September 17, 'but why has my dear Bishop
of London gone back and left it to him ? '

212 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

with which they had been treated. But it was
not a moment to allow personal considerations to
weigh, nor was the Cardinal a man to do so.
Though he had reluctantly signed, with his two
colleagues, the Lord Mayor and the Bishop, the
letter which, in Monday's newspapers, charged the
men with a breach of faith, he was already, when
it appeared, engaged in his fresh effort on their
behalf. In his summary of the affair, he places
his second act of mediation on this Sunday,
describing it as ' the beginning again, on the 8th,
after the manifesto of repudiation.'

Beginning again is proverbially a difficult busi
ness. Failure prophesies and paves the way for
failure. What had passed had rendered the work
of conciliation immeasurably harder. Through a
blunder of their leaders the men had been placed
apparently in the wrong ; and public opinion —
this must be repeated, since public opinion was an
important factor in the matter — hitherto almost
solidly in their favour, was veering. But to the
aged priest at Westminster difficulties were only
a more imperative call to set his hand to the
work.

Meantime, at Tower Hill next day, a meeting
was held, when Burns, announcing a further instal
ment of a thousand pounds from Australia, made

RENEWED EFFORTS 213

one of his most stirring speeches to his anxious
and weary hearers. Let them stand together, he
said, sick of the business though they were. It
was the Lucknow of labour.

At three o'clock, the meeting over, seven of the
chiefs of the strike, in response to a telegraphic
summons, repaired once more to the Mansion
House, Outside, they were met by Mr. Buxton ;
in the vestibule Cardinal Manning was found ;
who, having despaired of their coming, was pre
paring to go alone to Poplar, to visit in person the
Strike Committee at its headquarters.

In carrying on his negotiations with the leaders
he was confronted with no easy task. If the public
were angry with the leaders, the leaders, on their
side, were angry with the public — sore and em
bittered, they had been accused of bad faith and
were in no forgiving mood. But if any man could
hope to move them from their attitude of defiant
hostility it was the Cardinal, and it was he who
took the chief part in the argument that followed,
pleading that he had had more experience of men
than they. 'Than the lot of us put together/
agreed Burns, eager to make what admissions he
could. Declining to accept any answer as final
until the matter had been thoroughly discussed,
the Cardinal in the end had his way, and the

214 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

recalcitrant leaders consented to join the Lord
Mayor and Sir John Lubbock in the meeting
room. It was when this had been done that one
of the representatives of the men, Toomey by
name, made the suggestion which, acted upon,
resulted in peace. He proposed that the Cardinal
should meet the United Strike Committees in
Poplar at the Kirby Street schools, when he would
have the opportunity of speaking face to face
with the men upon whom the issue of the struggle
depended.

That day, Tuesday, September loth, was marked
by Cardinal Manning as the date of the third
act of mediation falling to his share. It was the
beginning of the end.

When, with Mr. Buxton, he reached Poplar, it
was five o'clock, the hour agreed upon. About
sixty-five men were present in the room, and each
man, at his request, was presented to him in turn
by name, a species of personal relationship being
thus established. The proceedings were then
inaugurated by a speech in which Tillett stated
his reasons for refusing the suggested compromise,
the Cardinal in his reply dealing with the objec
tions severally and making a fresh proposal, namely,
that the difference in date between the demand of
the men and the offer of the Directors should be

THE CARDINAL AT POPLAR 215

split, and that the increased rate of wages should
begin on November 4th. For twenty minutes he
spoke * very patiently,' urging his hearers, with the
air of gentle authority which won the hearts of all
who had dealings with him throughout the strike,
to consider, not themselves alone, but those depen
dent upon them and the public issues hanging
upon their action.

Mr. Buxton spoke next, briefly endorsing what
had been stated. But the men maintained their
unconciliatory attitude. ' For two hours,' the
Cardinal himself said, c there was little hope. . . .
Gradually a change came ; and Mr. Champion
moved a resolution adopting my proposal and
empowering me to treat with the Directors. This
was at last carried by twenty-eight to fifteen,
nineteen Surrey men not voting, their demand
being distinct from the north.'

Thus the victory is laconically described by its
chief agent. A more detailed account of it is
given elsewhere. Leader after leader had suc
cumbed and advised surrender ; Tillett alone was
obdurate, Burns remaining neutral. The debate
had gone on and still the issue hung in the balance.
After more than three hours the Cardinal rose to
make his ultimate appeal. Recapitulating what
had passed, he turned for a moment from the men

216 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

to himself, and defined his position, accountable
to no human authority and responsible to God
alone. Then he adjured his hearers not to pro
long the perilous uncertainty of that hour, and
with it the sufferings of women and children.
Manning was not a great orator, but he had the
secret of stirring the hearts and emotions of his
hearers. Overstrained, excited and moved by his
words, there were those amongst his listeners
whose eyes were wet. 'Just above his uplifted
hand was a carved figure of the Madonna and
Child, and some among the men tell how a sudden
light seemed to swim round it as the speaker
pleaded for the women and children. When he
sat down all in the room knew in their own minds
that he had won the day, and that, so far as the
Councils were concerned, that was the end of the
strike — the Cardinal's peace.'

A provisional agreement was signed and
placed in his hands, with which he was em
powered to go to the Directors, and the meeting
broke up. When late that evening Westminster
was reached, the Cardinal had touched no food
since his dinner at one o'clock, yet so little was he
in a condition of exhaustion that he could describe
to his secretary all that had taken place. His
victory sustained him till the work was done.

THE CARDINAL'S PEACE 217

It remained to deal with the Dock House. On
the Thursday a prolonged interview between the
Cardinal and the Directors took place, a telegram
from the Lord Mayor, who had been called out of
London, authorising the former to speak in his
name as well as in his own. ' I was therefore
empowered by both the men and the Lord
Mayor,' wrote the Cardinal afterwards. ' Hactenus
Balaam's ass.'

The Directors proved harder to move than their
opponents, and no definite answer was then given.
1 1 never in my life,' said the Cardinal, describing
his visit, ' preached to so impenitent a congrega
tion.' Nevertheless, complete friendliness was
maintained, the Cardinal remaining to tea with
the recalcitrant masters, before — loudly cheered
by the crowd as he left — he proceeded to meet the
representatives of the opposite party, whose
signatures were necessary before the Directors
would consent to give their consideration to any
proposal.

If there was still much to be done, every one
knew that since the meeting in Poplar the end
was a foregone conclusion. The Directors might
attempt to save their dignity by difficulties and
hesitation, but they were conquered; and Burns'
speech on Tower Hill, on Friday, September 13,

218 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

was that of a captain when the battle is over.
Amongst those who had tried to put an end to it,
he must, he said, give the premier position to
Cardinal Manning. That such a man should
have championed their cause was a compliment
to the Dock Labourers.

Saturday, September 14, saw the struggle
formally concluded. Beginning the day's work
by an interview with representatives of the
Lightermen's Work and Wages Committee; the
Cardinal next attended a meeting of the Associa
tion of Master Lightermen and Barge Owners at
Eastcheap. Late in the afternoon he was again
at Dock House; and proceeded immediately
afterwards to the Mansion House, where a final
meeting of the Conciliation Committee with the
Strike leaders took place. Speeches were made by
Burns and by the Lord Mayor, and lastly by the
Cardinal. The Lord Mayor, he said, had so fully
expressed what he felt that he hesitated to add
anything. But he should like to dwell upon the
singular self-command and order that had pre
vailed. The strike had not been stained by
anything that could detract from its honour, and
he hoped the future would be equally unstained.
As regarded himself, had he not done the little he
had attempted to do he would have been guilty of

THE CARDINAL'S PEACE 219

a dereliction of duty. He had simply done what
he felt to be incumbent upon him from the position
he held ; and what he was bound to do for the
love of his dear country, and the love of all men
joined together in the brotherhood of their
commonwealth.

So the long day ended. The proposed date
was accepted ; the Lightermen were won over by
the Lord Mayor and the Cardinal, the Surrey Side
Committee by Mr. Buxton and Mr. Burns. The
agreements were signed, and that night a notice was
posted outside Wade's Arms, to the effect that the
strike was at an end, and that all men were to
resume work on Monday. The * Cardinal's peace '
was triumphant.

Cardinal Manning did not escape — he could
scarcely be expected to escape — the ungenerous
charge of having made capital out of the oppor
tunity for ends of his own. In view of the assertion
that his intervention had been no more than a
successful bid for popularity, Mr. Boulton con
sidered it his duty to state his personal conviction,
'that his action throughout the whole of these
labour troubles was dictated by complete disin
terestedness and self-abnegation.' The same
authority also paid a tribute to the Cardinal's
earnestness and sincerity during that critical

220 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

juncture as well as afterwards ; his welcome of
criticism, and readiness to listen to adverse
arguments ; dwelling likewise upon ' the charm
and dignity of his manner and his clear and quick
appreciation of points urged in opposition to his
own conclusions.' From the Chairman of the
London Board of Conciliation, in disagreement
with him not only upon questions of religion, but
upon various political issues, Mr. Boulton's
testimony may be allowed to carry special weight.
Thus ended one of the most remarkable episodes
in Cardinal Manning's career. ' I believe/ he
wrote to a friend, * that our Lord used me as he
did Balaam's ass. I have been so long working
with working men that it is no difficulty to me ;
and somehow I am known to the English working
men as well as to any. They listened to me
readily from the first.' Perhaps nothing is more
significant of the degree to which he had identified
himself with the struggle than the tone of a brief
notice of the affair he contributed, at the request
of an editor, to a magazine. Excusing himself
from enlarging on the subject, since it is not those
who have fought in a battle who are best qualified
to describe it, he added that, * without any blind
self-praise/ he believed he might say that since
the Cotton Famine of the north there had been

LABOUR AND CAPITAL 221

no nobler example of self-command — the self-
command of the men — the measured language
and courtesy of the employers.1

In his eighty-first year — it is difficult, in the
face of the arduous and strenuous activity of those
days to bear in mind the fact of his great age — he
had been given the opportunity of testifying by
act and deed what can never be equally demon
strated by words written or spoken, his convictions
upon one of the greatest problems of the day — the
relations of capital and labour.

' It is not true/ he wrote more than a year later,
'that such contests are the private affairs of
masters and men. But the theory will not die
until it is killed by some public catastrophe.'

' But, your Eminence,' some one had protested
during the fight, 'it is socialism that you are
encouraging.'

1 1 do not know whether it means socialism to
you,' was his reply. ' To me, it means Christanity.'

Of the strike itself, John Burns, writing when it
was over, and he was in a position to look back
and take stock of loss and gain, asked the question
had it been worth while — the misery entailed, the
hardship, the privation, the hunger — and he
answered in the affirmative.

i-New Review, October 1889.

222 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

'The capacity for self-sacrifice is the phil
osopher's stone that every agitator seeks for. He
is powerless until he finds it ; finding it, he has no
more to ask. This power of self-sacrifice has been
the great note of the Dockers' Strike.' l

lNew Review, October 1889.

CHAPTER XIV

Split in the Irish Party— Manning's Attitude — His Forecasts
— Interview with M. Boyer d'Agen.

FOLLOWING upon the episode of the Dockers'
Strike — that brilliant postscript to the Cardinal's
long life-story — came another of a different char
acter.

There are pages in the lives of all men that a
biographer would prefer to leave unwritten, more
especially when the facts they contain seem to be
at variance with the traditions of a lifetime, and
to have, so to speak, no right to their place on
the record.

The course pursued by Cardinal Manning at
the time of the split in the Irish Party, during
the winter of 1890-91, comes to those who have
followed his steps so far with a shock of dis
appointment. It is fair, on the other hand, that,
in judging of a line of conduct and in seeking the
motives by which it was dictated, a man's previous
career should be taken into account. Cardinal
Manning had doubtless his failings. He was

& 223

224 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

guilty of errors of judgment ; he had probably
been frequently mistaken in his estimates of men ;
he was self-reliant and, as some might call it,
headstrong to a fault, and slow to confess to an
error ; but the critic looks in vain for the abandon
ment of a cause in deference to expediency ; nor
had he ever been prone to be led or swayed
by the clamour of the multitude. His own
words leave no doubt that he concurred in
the sacrifice of the Irish leader and must be
allowed to rank him, on this solitary occasion,
with the crowd to whom the verdict of a court of
law on a matter of private conduct sets the line
of demarcation between the culprit who is eligible
for public life and him who is to be excluded
from it. But it is no more than just to seek for his
conduct a motive other than the ignoble oppor
tunism by which mere politicians were swayed.
Such a motive is found in a letter he wrote at the
time.

1 For many years/ he said, ' I have held that a
judicial record such as that in Mr. Parnell's case
disqualifies a man for public life. From the
moment of this deplorable divorce case I have
held Mr. Parnell to be excluded from leadership,
not on political but on moral grounds.'

For once his clear-sightedness was at fault. He

MR. PARNELL 225

failed to perceive all that was involved in the
admission of the principle of judging a public
man upon private issues, and of allowing an
action affecting neither the confidence to be
placed in him as a political leader, nor his
capacity for the performance of his duties, to
preclude him from continuing to occupy his
post. But if the Cardinal committed an error of
judgment, he was not guilty, like others, of acting
in servile obedience to a mere popular outcry.
The moment the decree had become known,
so Morley states, he had written to the Irish
Bishops to express his persuasion, not only that
Mr. Parnell's leadership could not be upheld in
London, but that no political expediency could
outweigh the moral sense, and fhat plain and
prompt speech was safest.1 He is therefore
cleared from the imputation of having held his
judgment suspended until convinced, like Mr.
Gladstone — avowedly subservient to the English
voter; like the majority of the Irish Members;
like the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland,
that political expediency and self-interest required
the abandonment of the leader.2

1 See Morley's ' Life of Gladstone.'

2 See Morley's ' Life of Gladstone.' The story is made clear by
an examination of dates. The decree of the Law Court was made
on November 17. On November 18, Mr. Gladstone expressed

P

226 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Even had he foreseen what were to be the
consequences to Ireland and to its hopes of the
policy pursued, it is not likely that he would have
modified his line of conduct. But if his sagacity
had failed him upon the abstract question at
issue, it had done so no less upon the result of
the present application of the principle. Viewed
in conjunction with subsequent events, it is easy
to see how, as a matter of worldly wisdom alone,
the sacrifice of their chief, in deference to an
English party cry and at the bidding of an
English statesman, was destined to prove fatal
to the hopes of his followers. Yet so little had
Manning apprehended the true character and
extent of the catastrophe that, in a letter to
Mr. Justin M'Carthy, the pilot who had replaced
Mr. Parnell at the helm, he wrote that he saw
Ireland ' rising and re-organising itself, after a
passing obscuration, upon the old and only lines

surprise at the quiescence of the Irish Bishops and clergy. The
meeting in Leinster Hall took place on November 2Oth, no sign
of revolt being apparent at it. In London, on November 25,
Mr. Parnell was re-elected to the leadership by the Irish Party,
still ignorant of the line adopted by Mr. Gladstone, which became
public immediately after, with the well-known result. Not until
November 3Oth did the Irish Bishops pronounce against Mr.
Parnell, Archbishop Walsh explaining that they had been slow
to act, trusting that the party would act manfully, and complaining
that their considerate silence and reserve were being dishonestly
misinterpreted.

MR. PARNELL 227

which had unfolded its noble life throughout the
world.'

The words, in the light of what was to follow,
read like irony. More inexplicable and incon
sistent still, save on the hypothesis that he was
yielding to a passing access of anger and dis
appointment, is the statement he has been quoted
as making in a private letter, to the effect that for
ten years Ireland had been dragged by politicians,
and that it was now his hope that it would return
to its old guides.

Such is briefly the history, so far as it can be
constructed from available records, of the share
taken by Cardinal Manning in the Irish disaster.
Whatever may be thought of it, it is curious and
interesting to find that too late, and when death
had removed the captain alone capable of leading
Ireland to victory, he explicitly recognised the
services Mr. Parnell had rendered to the country,
paying him a tribute scarcely to be reconciled
with his earlier attitude, and seeming to contain
a tardy and tacit admission of error. The last
man to give expression to useless sentiment ; the
last, when the time for practical reparation was
past, to utter vain regrets ; the last, it must be
added, to acknowledge himself mistaken, there is
nevertheless discernible in the account of a visit

228 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

paid him by M. Boyer d'Agen, in the autumn of
1891, something of what was in his mind as the
Irish chief was carried to his grave.

Death, indeed, makes many things plain.
'When such a man as Parnell passes,' says
one who knew him, 'all the infirmities of life
fall off, and only his originality and greatness
remain. Then it becomes a marvel that the
multitude of rats has been the undoing of the
lion.'1 In the Cardinal's full recognition of the
life's work of the dead, there are surely traces of
a reconsideration of that verdict which had, two
years earlier, concurred in his repudiation. It
was not, he told his visitor, for a priest to pro
nounce judgment on the political ground of Home
Rule. What a priest had a right to recognise
was that, a Protestant by birth, Parnell had
ever remained an Irishman, and in working for
the emancipation of Ireland had not separated
religion from the land. Others, in the pages
reserved in the history of national vindications
for Ireland's great patriot and England's victim,
would tell of the good he had done. A priest
might point out, in praise of the leader of a
cause, the harm he had not done. He had
never divided Irish religion from Irish politics.

1 ' A Memory of Parnell.' R. B. Cunninghame Graham.

MR. PARNELL 229

Fighting for the independence of the land, he
had safeguarded Catholic independence. Irre
proachable in his politics, he was said to have
failed personally. England had declared it by
her judges and proved it before her tribunals.
In that declaration and in those tribunals Cath
olics had nothing to gainsay. Irish Catholics
might salute with respect the honoured remains
of a man who had loved his country until death.
A day would come when, sunk in religious con
flict, that country would understand the statesman
it had lost in the person of Parnell.1

1 The Cardinal died before there had been time for him to
correct, as he had promised, the proofs of M. Boyer d'Agen's
account of the conversation. It must therefore remain, in a sense,
unauthorised.

CHAPTER XV

The End Approaching — Farewells — The Cardinal's Jubilee
—Congratulations— Last Months— Death— His Funeral.

THE end of the long life was approaching ; the
Cardinal's work was soon to be over. Ten years
earlier he had already looked upon the night as at
hand, and had prepared a paper, left for post
humous publication, in which he in some sort
took his last leave of his clerical subordinates.
Moved at that date to anger by the virulence of
certain newspaper attacks of which he had been
the object, it had been the desire of many of his
loyal clergy to present him with an address ex
pressive of their indignation, and though the plan
was not carried into effect, the document drawn
up by the Cardinal was of the character of a reply
to the personal and offensive insinuations of the
press ; made, not to the hostile public, but to
those associated with him in his work, 'whose
brotherly affection had opened both his lips and
his heart.' Never communicated during his life
time to those to whom it was addressed, it con-

230

FAREWELLS 231

tained his farewell to them, and belongs, as such,
to this last stage of his career.

Reviewing his past, and entering into an ex
planation of facts misrepresented or open to mis
representation, he concluded by a confession of
inevitable mistakes, and craved forgiveness from
God and man. ' It cannot be that in a life so
active, so public, and so various, for more than
forty years, I have not acted rashly, hastily, un
wisely. But I have endeavoured to have a con
science without offence towards God and towards
man. In these thirty years, and above all in the
last sixteen, you must have much to forgive.
There is only one thing of which I feel that I can
say I am innocent. I have never consciously or
intentionally wronged any one. What I may un
consciously or unintentionally have done I dare
not say. I ask forgiveness of God and of you. I
thank you from my heart for the words of affection
which have drawn all this from me.'

It was a premature leave-taking. When the
paper was written ten long years more remained
before the Cardinal was to lay down his work.
But now the end could not be far off; and as he
looked on, his soul was often troubled and anxious.
Conscious as he must have been that the position
he had rilled in the life of the English nation was

232 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

in a sense unparalleled, he could scarcely fail to
be solicitous concerning the future, when he would
be no longer at hand to pilot the ship. Who would
be charged with the duty of carrying on the work
he had begun ? How would that work prosper in
other hands ?

As before, the private notes belonging to those
last months admit the reader to his confidence.
In the loneliness scarcely separable from the old
age of a childless priest, he recalled the past, and
made his forecasts of the future. As early as
1888, illness and increasing age and weakness had
warned him of the growing uncertainty of his
tenure on life. ' How slight a push/ he then
wrote, 'will send an old man over into sleep.'
His days were now — it was with him a favourite
simile — 'a tempus clausum^ a slowing into the
terminus.' Tenacious as he was of retaining his
place at the helm, the thought would sometimes
obtrude itself that, released from the responsi
bilities attaching to his great position, he would
be more at rest ; but it did not take permanent
hold on him, and the hope that he would die ( on
the field and in harness,' was a truer expression of
his normal condition of mind. Yet the end, like
the skull in the cell of an anchorite, was ever
before him. ' I feel I may be called at any

FAREWELLS 233

moment/ he wrote on the last day of 1888. . . .
' I count upon nothing but the day ... it is so
small a thing that would put life out. . . . My
active life is over.' Again, in the following April,
' I hope that a lasting work has been left at least
in London. . . . My only contacts with the world
have been public and for work, and especially for
the poor and the people. Looking back, I am
conscious how little I have done, partly from want
of courage, partly from over-caution. And yet
caution is not cowardice/

When congratulations poured in upon him at
the completion of his eightieth year, his sister,
thirteen years older, sent him a singular note of
warning. Not by the length of a man's days but
by how they were spent, she reminded him, he
would be judged. Gently and humbly the Car
dinal accepted the admonition.

* I never forget that/ he observed. ' And yet
what I have done is nothing, and I go empty-
handed to my Redeemer/

A final entry in the diary wherein his reminis
cences, views, opinions, hopes, and forecasts are
registered, bears the date November 9, 1890, and
fitly closes the record of his labours.

' I remember/ he wrote, looking back over the
long years dividing the Archdeacon of Chichester

234 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

from the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, ' I
remember how often I have said that my chief
sacrifice in becoming Catholic was " that I ceased
to work for the people of England, and had
thenceforward to work for the Irish occupation
in England." Strangely, all this is reversed. If
I had not become Catholic I could never have
worked for the people of England, as in the last
year they think I have worked for them. Angli
canism would have fettered me. The liberty of
truth and of the church has lifted me above all
dependence and limitations. This seems like the
latter end of Job, greater than the beginning. I
hope it is not the condemnation that all men speak
well of me.'

If there is a note of conscious victory in the
words, few will grudge the Cardinal his sense of a
work accomplished, a triumph achieved. The
quiet and thankful acknowledgment of hard-won
success closes the pages of self-revelation which,
more than the cold criticism of strangers, the
reluctant commendation of a biographer, the
panegyrics of friends, or the dispraise of oppon
ents, place the writer before us.

Six months earlier, his Silver Jubilee as Arch
bishop of Westminster had been celebrated, men
of all creeds and classes joining in their congratu-

SILVER JUBILEE 235

lations. The tokens of appreciation, admiration,
and affection took various forms. In heading a
deputation entrusted with a sum of money
designed to remove or lighten the debt upon the
Pro-Cathedral, Lord Ripon made special reference
to the social services rendered by the Cardinal,
' I hope,' he said, ' it will not be out of accord with
the sentiments of those whom I have the honour
to represent, if I venture to say with how much
pride my fellow Catholics regard the course which
your Eminence has taken with respect to popular
and especially social questions in this country.'
The position acquired by his co-religionists in
public life was, the speaker added, not only due
to the dying out of prejudice, but also in a large
degree to the course the Cardinal had pursued.

Following upon the congratulations of the
convert statesman to the convert Cardinal, came
a second deputation, when a large sum of money
collected as a personal gift was presented by the
Duke of Norfolk. In acknowledging it the
Cardinal referred to a like offering made to him
on his elevation to the Cardinalate. On that
occasion, he said lightly, a friendly suspicion of
his bad habits had been entertained, and he had
been made to promise not to spend it. He had
kept his word, giving it over at once for the

236 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

mensa of the Archbishop of Westminster. c I do
not complain/ he said, ' of the suspicion as a rash
judgment. Much has passed through my hands
in these five and twenty years. Nothing has
stayed under this roof. All has gone into the
work which has been entrusted to me.' No such
stipulations, however, had accompanied the present
gift, and he proceeded to state his intentions with
regard to it. His desire was to die, as a priest
ought, without money and without debts. As
that time could not be far off, he made his will in
procinctuy as it was called, girded for battle as a
soldier going into the fray; and he gave an
account of the objects to which the money would
be devoted. Other tributes were applied to other
works of charity, a sum presented by the Trades
Union being used to found a bed at the London
Hospital. But of the events marking this June,
the most interesting, to us who read of it in the
account of an eye-witness,1 is the scene when a
deputation of Dockers came to present the con
gratulations of their comrades to the man who
had championed their cause. Kneeling one and
all, whatever their faith or their unfaith, for his
blessing, they presented their address, with £160,
collected chiefly in pence. It was a tribute that

1 Daily Chronicle.

SILVER JUBILEE 237

might well stir his heart. It did. * Think of it ! '
he whispered brokenly to one who stood near, as
he held the illuminated sheet in his trembling
hands — 'how can I thank them?' then, 'stop,
stop,' he said as the spokesman would have begun
his speech ; ' we are not all seated/ himself remain
ing standing until his old servant had fetched a
sufficient number of chairs to accommodate those
of his visitors who exceeded the thirty for whom
preparation had been made.

Yet another presentation in honour of his
Jubilee, though not taking place till some months
later, was made by the Jewish community of
London. Some ten years earlier, at the time of
the Russian persecution, a delegation had waited
upon him with the object of obtaining his sym
pathy and soliciting his aid on behalf of the
victims. Eagerly he had promised both.

'You ask my protection, my sympathy, my
help,' he had answered. . . . ' As a priest of God I
will contend for you. All my strength is enlisted
on your behalf.'

He had kept his word. And now the acting
Chief Rabbi, Dr. Adler, on behalf of his brethren
of Hebrew blood and faith, came to offer their
homage, as Englishmen and as Jews, to one of
England's most distinguished sons. As English-

238 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

men, it was rendered to the man who had
laboured with unflagging zeal and signal success
for the promotion of religious education ; had
proved the staunchest friend of the toiler ; and
had given a sadly needed impulse to the spread
of charity and the union of hearts. As Jews,
belonging to a nation never charged amongst its
failings with ingratitude, the name of Cardinal
Manning, said Dr. Adler, would ever, in virtue of
what he had done for the victims of persecution,
rank foremost in the annals of their race.

The note of cordial and brotherly appreciation
was echoed in the Cardinal's response. After
making allusion to the example of generosity and
efficiency set by the Jewish community in their
care of the sick, the poor, and children, * I should
not be true to my own faith/ he went on to say,
* if I did not venerate yours. There are, I believe,
only three indestructible elements in the history
of man — the people and faith of Israel, the
Catholic Church, sprung from it, and the world
which has persecuted both.' For the rest, all who
were called Christian were not Christian — all were
not of Israel who were called Israelites. Dark
and terrible deeds had been done of which Israel,
as a people, was guiltless ; misdeeds had been com
mitted by which the Catholic church was unstained.

LAST MONTHS 239

In England equality happily prevailed ; and Jews,
sharing her strength, added to it. It was not thus
in other lands. Men became what their rulers
made them. Penal codes rendered loyal men
disloyal, social vexations generated animosities
that crushed the weak and stung men to madness.
And the Cardinal ended by wishing all grace and
blessing to his guests and their homes.

As the end drew near and his activities were
necessarily limited, the Cardinal still continued to
labour, if not by spoken word, by his pen ; the last
year being marked by two contributions to peri
odical literature, the one a paper on ' Darkest
England,' the other dealing, in the Contemporary
Review^ with child labour. A description of the
fashion in which his days were spent, supplied by
himself not more than seven months before his
death, shows that the long habit of toil remained
unbroken.

Each morning, he said, brought a multitude of
letters, opened by himself, of which many received
an answer in his own hand, the rest keeping two
secretaries busy. He had a long day, rising at
seven, dining at half past one, having tea at seven,
and often not going to rest till past eleven, after a
day filled with work. From active labour he
was inevitably debarred. Calling at Archbishop's

240 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

House some time in 1890, with the object of
inducing him if possible to preside at a great
demonstration in favour of the purification of
music halls, Archdeacon Farrar had found him
compelled to decline, though from no lack of
sympathy or readiness to help. The Bishop of
London — who in the end consented to occupy the
chair — was hesitating as to the wisdom of doing
so. Save on the score of health, the Cardinal did
not hesitate for a moment. But health forbade.

'Whatever reason the Bishop of London has
for hesitating,' he told the Archdeacon, ' there are
eighty reasons why I should not go. When a
man passes fourscore years he must obey his
doctor's orders/

Old as he was, it was hard to realise that his
days of active service were over.

' I travel no more upon the earth/ he told M.
Felix de Breux, when invited by the Society of
Social and Political Science to give a conference
at Brussels. But M. de Breux afterwards con
fessed that he had attached little importance to
the words, so full of the future had he but lately
found him. His interest in it continuing so keen,
it was difficult to grasp the fact that it must be,
in the order of nature, a future with which he had
personally little concern.

LAST MONTHS 241

If he could no longer go forth to his work, as
in former days, he was as ready as ever to wel
come it at home. Nor had his personal attraction
and influence lessened. He could have sat with
the Cardinal talking all night, said a stevedore —
once a member of the Dockers' Strike Committee
— who passed an evening with him in the February
before he died. The conversation had turned
upon matters interesting to both — the condition
of the Dock labourers and the result of their strike,
with the question of strikes in general, and what
was to be gained by them. When the guest took
leave — the Cardinal insisting on personally escort
ing him to the stairs, lest he should lose his way
in the great house — a lasting effect had been
produced. A man of avowedly little or no religion,
the impression left upon the visitor by that
evening's talk was not quickly effaced, and had
kindled in him the desire to turn his life to better
account.

Attendance at one public function the Cardinal
could not forego ; and in the August of this last
year he was present at the great annual festival of
the League of the Cross, driving down for the
purpose to the Crystal Palace. His temperance
work lay very close to his heart, and many and
anxious were his forecasts concerning its future.

Q

242 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

Public affairs too, domestic and foreign, con
tinued to make good their claim upon his
attention. To the October of this last year
belongs the visit from M. Boyer d'Agen, of which
mention has been already made. It was upon
the clerical question in France that M. d'Agen
had desired to obtain in the first place the
opinion of the English Cardinal. Would the
Church become republican, or would it not?
The French Bishops having suspended their reply
to this crucial question, it had occurred to him
that Paris might possibly be reached through
London, and the Archeveche in the rue de
Grenelle by way of Archbishop's House, West
minster.

The autumn afternoon was closing in when
d'Agen entered the Cardinal's presence ; and as
he looked at the old man leaning back in his
chair of red and gold, his emaciated figure lost in
the heavy folds of his cassock, it seemed to the
stranger that he was gazing at a shadow clad
in black and crimson. Frail though his body
might be, he was prepared to discuss the questions
of the hour with all his old vigour. As to the
policy best to be pursued by the French epis
copate, he delivered his opinion with character
istic absence of hesitation. The policies under

FRANCE AND ITALY 243

consideration might be many, one only would
prevail — that inspired and confirmed by Leo xin.
— to adhere, that is, to the form of every legally
constituted government, making reservation as to
the men by whom it was represented. This was
the policy of Cardinal Lavigerie ; who, without
taking the part of the Republic, had declared
against hostility towards it.

On the Italian question he was also ready to
give his opinion. His conviction that the taking
of Rome had been a legalised robbery was no less
strong than in former days. The Pope's position
was in his eyes intolerable, and a standing menace
to European peace. But he had no sympathy
with partisan extravagances, such as had been
lately perpetrated in Rome, where the cry of
A bas le roi> raised by three young Frenchmen,
had brought Italy and France to the verge of
war. ' Est ce en conspuant Victor Emmanuel
qu'on pense acclamer Leon xill. ? ' he asked con
temptuously. Should the Pope's position be
rendered still more insupportable by a gamin-
eriet It must be left to time to modify or
destroy the anti-papal will of Italy.

Turning to secular affairs in France, he deplored
in particular the absence of a right of public
meeting, and of freedom in kindred matters.

244 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

The lack of this freedom appeared indeed to him
the most alarming feature of French legislation.
In England, possessing the power of free election,
the elector was above the member of the Govern
ment. Here, politics were an acquired science;
in France they were nothing but an improvisation.
All for the people and by the people, was the
fundamental principle of a great republic. And
he gave his blessing for a free France, and for
those rights of meeting and association that she
must at all costs vindicate.

Whilst public questions retained their full in
terest for him, personal criticism had not lost its
importance. * Certes on m'attaqueront,' he wrote
in the October of his last year, requesting that
some numbers of the Figaro should be sent him ;
' Je voudrais voir les assauts.' The time was at
hand when the attacks of enemies, like the com
mendations of friends, would have no power to
move him.

Early in 1892 came the end, preceded by no
long or painful failure: finding him, as he had
desired, in harness, though not unexpectant of
the release which was at hand.

'Thank you,' he said when an inquiry had
been made concerning his health, 'I am quietly
slowing into the station.' Nevertheless, though

THE END 245

looking calmly forward to the inevitable end, his
daily life was carried on as if no great crisis was
at hand, nor had even trifles lost their power to
interest him.

' Have I grown as old as all that ? ' he asked, as
he looked at a portrait that was being painted of
him during these last days, adding an injunction
that 'these rags' — the old cassock he wore —
should not be depicted. To the last, too, he
continued the assertion of his political creed.
Discussing some current topic with Archbishop
Benson at Marlborough House the preceding
year, he had avowed himself a Radical, employ
ing half in jest the term applied to him by his
opponents ; and only a few days before his death
he again made use of it.

' We are honest Radicals — he and I,' he told an
Irish priest, as he charged him with a message of
affectionate remembrance to Archbishop Croke.

No severe illness warned the outside world of
the approaching end; but on January 14, London
learnt that he was gone. Early that morning
he passed in peace and quietness away. With
out haste or hurry he had set out on the last
journey.

' I have laid my burden down,' he said a day or
two earlier; and again, approached on matters of

246 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

business, he intimated that the time was at length
come for it to pass into other hands. ' No/ he
said, ' my work is done.'

On January I3th, in the small scantily furnished
bedroom he occupied at the top of his great house,
and lying pontifically clothed on his pallet bed, he
made his final profession of faith.

* Opus meum consummatum est,' he said later
that evening. A few hours afterwards he had
passed away.

The city mourned him, rich and poor paying
him equal honour. Death, the great reconciler,
would have brought oblivion of all differences of
judgment, divergences of opinion, even had not
time been beforehand in that matter. But it
was perhaps amongst the poor that regret was
keenest. He had been the poor man's Cardinal.

Everywhere meetings were held as the news
went abroad, to express the sense of loss on the
part of the labouring portion of the community.
Resolutions of regret were passed by the Millwall
Branch of the Dock, Wharf, and Riverside Union
— who declared him 'endeared to the heart of
every dock worker ' — by the Barge Builders' Trade
Union, the Gas Workers' Union, the Sailors' and
Firemen's Union, the Carpenters' and Joiners'
Societies and others ; and at a crowded meeting

GENERAL MOURNING 247

of delegates to the London Trades Council in
Farringdon Street, the keen sense of irreparable
loss which had been suffered by the death of
Henry Edward, Cardinal Archbishop of West
minster, was expressed. ' By his tender sympathy
for the suffering, his fearless advocacy of justice,
especially for the poor, and by his persistent
denunciation of the oppression of the workers, he
has endeared his memory to the hearts of every
true friend of labour.'

In Poplar, where the memory of his recent
intervention as peacemaker was still fresh, Mr.
Sydney Buxton spoke of the place he had filled
in the hearts of the toiling masses. Whilst every
one knew, he said, how the Cardinal had laboured
at the time of the great strike, only a few were
aware how much had been done by him, modestly,
privately — for he hated publicity, except when
it was essential to success — to prevent disputes
from culminating in strikes. His influence for
peace was enormous, and remained so till his
death.

Nor was regret confined to his own country.
* The unhappy have lost their friend/ wrote some
one to the Figaro ; and the unhappy are limited to
no single race or blood.

As he lay in state at Westminster, every

248 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

class, every creed, every party, united in doing
him homage. It had been determined that none
should be refused access to the Cardinal, dead, to
whom, living, his doors had ever been open : and
for three days the people of London — his own
flock, mostly Irish, the English working men who
had learnt to love and reverence him, and others
of every station in life moved in single file to, it is
said, the number of 100,000 through the temporary
chapel where he had been placed. At first the
services of police constables had been called in to
keep order, but afterwards his own Guards of the
League of the Cross were permitted to replace
them, and, wearing their green sashes as badges
of office, marshalled the throng as it passed in
and out of their master's presence.

' The scene that London witnessed/ wrote a
secular review, 'when the great Cardinal of the
common people lay in state, holding as it were
a last audience to which all were welcome, has
had no parallel in our time as a popular tribute
to the incarnation of a great spiritual and moral
force.'

* He will walk through purgatory like a King,'
said one of his own poor, as she looked her last
upon him.

The funeral was again the occasion of a demon-

GENERAL MOURNING 249

stration of an unusual character. It was not only
a religious — it was a national ceremony. March
ing with their flags and banners, all those public
bodies who wished thus to assert their right to
a share in the mourning for the Cardinal democrat
took part, as the dead would have desired, in
the procession. The League of the Cross —
his special creation — was represented by 16,000
men, with the United Kingdon Alliance, the
National League, the Trades Unions of London,
the Dockers' Societies, the Amalgamated Society
of Stevedores, the Order of Good Templars, the
Federation of Trades and Labour Unions, and the
Universal Mercy Band Movement.

As the great procession proceeded along the
four miles lying between the Brompton Oratory
and Kensal Green, the streets were lined with
masses of spectators, gathered to testify their love
and respect for the friend of the poor, as he was
carried to his grave. ' It was an entire people/
says M. de Pressense, ' the people of toil, of misery,
and of suffering, who rose up to mourn a hero of
charity.'

' Remember his name as a blessing ' — the words
in use amongst the Hebrew people when one of
its heroes has passed away — were spoken in a New

250 THE CARDINAL DEMOCRAT

York synagogue, as the preacher reminded his
hearers of the friend of their race who was gone.
As a blessing the name of the Cardinal Democrat
will also be remembered amongst those of his own
nation and blood.

INDEX

il.

Adler, Dr. , Acting Chief Rabbi,

237, 238
Agricultural Labourers' Union,

65

Alliance News, The, quoted, 93
American Catholic Quarterly,

The, article in, 183-5
Anne's, St., Spitalfields, 98
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 12
Arch, Mr., 66
Augustine, St. , quoted, III

B
Barry, Canon William, quoted,

190

Baunard, Monseigneur, 164
Benson, Dr., Archbishop of

Canterbury, 211, 245
Booth, General, 101, 169-173
Boulanger, General, 46
Boulton, Mr., 202, 219, 220
Boyer d'Agen, M., 228, 242-4
Bradlaugh, Mr., 66
Brassey, Lord, 203
Breux, M. Felix de, 240
British and Foreign Anti-Slavery

Society, 74

Brooklyn Review, The, 151
Brunetiere, M., quoted, 193
Burns, Dr. Dawson, 89, 90, 91,

92, 172, 173

Burns, Mr. John, 20, 203-9, 212,
213, 215, 217, 218, 219, 221,

222

Butler, Father, 45

Buxton, Mr. Sydney, 203-5, 214,

247

C
Cardwell, Mr. , Manning's letter

to, 114
Cashel, Dr. Croke, Archbishop

of, I37> 245
Champion, Mr. Henry, 201, 205,

210, 215

Clerkenwell Green, Meeting on,

98

Clifford, Sir Charles, 31
Compensation Clauses, 93
Cromwell, Oliver, 166
Crystal Palace, Temperance

Meetings at, 99, 241
Cullen, Cardinal, 59

D

Darboy, Monseigneur, Arch
bishop of Paris, 65, 82
Davitt, Michael, 151
Delane, Mr., 59
Delavan, Mr. Edward, 90
' Dignity and Rights of Labour,'

67-72

Dilke, Sir Charles, 66
Disraeli, Mr., 59, 143, 146
Dockers' Strike, The, 195 seq.

F

Farrar, Archdeacon, 145, 240
Fenianism, 120, 123
Figaro, The, 177, 244, 247

252

INDEX

Garibaldi ; his visit to England,

114
George, Henry, 151, 152, 153,

192

Gibbons, Cardinal, 179, 180
Gladstone, Rt. Hon. William,

57 seq., 126-128, 225, 226
Grey, Lord, Manning's letter to,

120 seq.
Grote, ii

H

Harmel, M., 188

Hazlitt, quoted, no

Holland, Canon Scott, quoted,

13, 14

Hope, James, 56
Housing of the Poor, Royal

Commission, 75

Irish Affairs, 119 seq.
Irish University Bill, 58, 59
Irish Land League, 74
International Prison Congress,
73

Jessel, Sir George, 79
Jubilee, The Cardinal's Silver,
234 seq.

K

Knights of Labour, The, 180,
198, 199

Lamennais, 186
Lavigerie, Cardinal, 243
League of the Cross, 94, 97 seq. ,

241

Lemire, The Abbe, 187
Leo XIIL, Pope, 4, 116, 125,

138, 185, 190-4, 243
Lubbock, Sir John, 203, 214
Lusk, Sir Andrew, 203
Lyceum, The, quoted, 139, 140

M

Macaulay, Lord, 42
M'Carthy, Mr. Justin, 226
Mann, Mr. Tom, 145, 205
Manning, Henry Edward ; his
special work, 1-5 ; his posi
tion, 5 ; views and opinions,
6 seq ; birth and training, IO ;
Archbishop of Westminster,
17 ; previous work, 21-25 5
educational work, 27-38 ; his
methods, 39, and spirit, 41 ;
loneliness, 43 ; aspirations for
his flock, 48; ideals, 51, 52;
self-confidence, 53, 54; breach
with Mr. Gladstone, 56-64;
enters upon social work, 64 ;
lectures at Leeds, 67 • 72 ;
varied labours, 73, 76 ; the
Cardinalate, 77 ; financial
position, 8 1 -86; Temperance
work, 87-96 ; founds the
League of the Cross, 97 ;
early and late views on the
Temporal Power Question,
110-118; on the Irish Ques
tion, 119; letter to Lord
Grey, 120-123; changed opin
ions, 127 ; a Home Ruler,
129; Mgr. Persico's mission,
132 ; Manning's popularity in
Ireland, 139; increasing age,
141 ; different views of him,
143-146; political neutrality,
147 ; visitors at his house,
148-153; the Social Purity
Crusade, 154-159; Trafalgar
Square Riot, 160 ; his con
demnation of the Government,
161, 162; later writings, 163;
breadth of spirit, 165 ; views
on the Salvation Army, 169-
173 ; pleads for the worthless,
!73> J745 denies that he is a
Socialist, 176 ; intervenes on
behalf of the Knights of
Labour, 178, 179, 180 ; at
tacked by The Times, 181 ;

INDEX

253

his reply, 182; the 'Law of
Nature,' 183-185; his influ
ence at the Vatican, 185, 186;
a visit from the Abbe Lemire,
187; in communication with
French Social Reformers, 188-
190; the Pope's Encyclical on
Labour, 191-194; intervenes
in the Dockers' Strike, 195-
218; 'the Cardinal's Peace,'
219; conduct on the Irish
split, 222-227 » his tribute to
Mr. Parnell, 228, 229 ; old
age, 230-233 ; Silver Jubilee,
234'239 > last months, 241 ;
death, 245 ; general mourning,
246 ; funeral, 249

Mason, Canon, 211 note

Mathew, Father, 94, 97

Mayor, The Lord, 203, 205,
211, 212, 214, 217, 218, 219

Morley, The Rt. Hon. John,
quoted, 225

Mullois, The Abbe, 168

Mun, The Comte de, 190

Mundella, Mr., 66

N

Newdegate, Mr., 78
Newman, Cardinal, 61
Norfolk, Duke of, 83 seq. , 235
Norwood, Mr., 205
Nottingham, Bishop of, 104
Nouvelle Revue, quoted, 5, 186

O

O'Brien, Mr. William, 132
Odgers, Mr., 66
O'Donoghue, The, 130
O'Reilly, Boyle, 40
Oxford, Union Jubilee at, 77
Ozanam. Frederic, 13

Parnell, Charles Stewart, 128,
129, 137, 138, 224-229

Persico, Mgr., his mission, 132-
137

Pius ix., Pope, 4, 116, 185
Plan of Campaign, 132, 134
Poplar, the Cardinal at, 214-216
Pressense, M. F. de, 249
Purcell, Mr. , frequently quoted

R

Redmond, Mr. William, 130,

'Si-

Rescript, The Papal, 134-138
Ripon, The Marquis of, 235
Robertson, Rev. Frederick, 64

Salisbury, Marquis of, 7
Salvation Army, 101, 169-173
Sandford, Sir H. Francis, 38
Shaft esbury, Lord, 167
Shop Hours' League, etc., 75
Simeoni, Cardinal, 186
Social Purity Crusade, 154 seq.
Socialism, the Cardinal disclaims,

176, 177

Society of Arts, 74
Standard, quoted, 102
State-directed Colonization, 75
Stead, Mr., 158

Tablet, The, 103, 120, 183

Talbot, Mgr., 30, 34-36, 55

Temperance, Manning's Tem
perance work, 87 seq.

Temple, Dr. , Bishop of London,
203, 205, 211, 212, 240

Temporal Power of the Pope,
1 1 1 seq.

Tillett, Mr. Ben., 3, 203-208,
214, 215

Times, The, 128, 133, 155, 181-
183

Tocqueville, De, quoted, 2, 12,

13

Tooke, ii

Trafalgar Square Riot, 160, 161

Trevelyan, Sir Charles, 66

254

INDEX

u

United Kingdom Alliance, 87-

Vatican Council, 56
Vatican Decrees, 58
Victor Emmanuel, King, 243

W

Walsh, Dr., Archbishop of Dub
lin, 133, 138, 226

Waugh, Rev. Benjamin, 27, 144

Wesley, John, 170

Whately, 11

Wilberforce, Archdeacon, 56

Wilberforce, Bishop, 23

Wiseman, Cardinal, 30, 31, 79,
83

Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty
at the Edinburgh University Press

TAYLOR, IDA A. BQ1

2099
.M2

The cardinal democrat T32.